theSpace@Niddryst
Aug 7-29
(19:15)
I’ve been to Collodi – me & my girlfriend went there about twenty years ago while touring Tuscany. The home of Pinocchio, I’m sure there was an image of the little wooden fella every few paces. Beyond his homelands, tho’, the wooden puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy has become one of the standard avatars of human mythmaking – with Walt Disney, of course, having a massive hand in spreading the story around the world via the slopes of Hollywood’s immortality making hills.
The greatest stories come from the most unexpected places
Roll on to 2026, & the irreverent – but very relevant – American comedy troupe Big Tobacco have return’d to the Edinburgh Fringe with their own adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s classic tale. The four-piece – Brad Beideman, Brian Fitzgerald, Lyndsey Kempf & Eli Lutsky – have been making comedy together for more than a decade, & this time they’ve taken their joke-a-second sensibility to old-timey Italy, dragging Pinocchio, Jiminy, Geppetto & the Blue Fairy along for a gloriously warp’d journey into what it actually means to become a real boy. They’ve also renamed Collodi to Fellatio & moved Italy to the ‘#Land of Make Beleive.’
Papa John Dominoes: I don’t know what you believe you s
thought you saw
Pinnochio: We saw you eating that little guy
Papa John Dominoes: In that case, computer, lock the door
LA-based Big Tobacco are Brad Beideman (Jiminy Cricket), a writer, performer & gay guy from “the most beautiful city in the world.” Brian Gitzgerald (Gepetoo, etc…) was in Edinburgh playing Woody in Bad Play (1923) — an experience I believe made him a confident cookie all the way thro’ his performance. Lyndsey Kempf (Blue Fairy, etc…) says when she is not working with Big Tobacco she is “allowing all sorts of scientists & doctors to do experiments with her.” Fourthly, & most importantly in this perspective, of course, Eli Lutsky (Pinocchio), who revels in performance art, from stand-up to theatre.
I wonder what my puppet penis tastes of?
All four of them wrote & produc’d the show, & I would have loved to be a fly in that room, smoking a doobie or three, supping on the gallons of laughs. Basically, imagine what Futurama might do with Pinocchio & you’ll get the idea. Big Tobacco describe the show as a mostly faithful adaptation written for adults, using Pinocchio’s transformation to poke around in the relentless absurdity of growing up – only they’ve cramm’d as many jokes as humanly possible into the process. Playing the Upper Theatre at theSpace @ Niddry St, it’s a 50-minute collision of alternative comedy, theatre & mangled fairy tale: recognisable enough that we know the road we’re travelling, but with Big Tobacco behind the wheel, there’s absolutely no guarantee we’ll reach the same destination.
When I sign’d that contract I was promis’d delicious creams & sauces
There was just so much to see, so many twists to handle, so much energy, so much comedy – a pure cornucopia of brilliance, with punchlines landing like 20-pounder bombs. We had a puppet made out of a Marlboro packet called “Smamokio”; a Pleasure Island where the trains suck you off; Pinocchio chasing his dad around the stage, begging, “Will you read me Anal Punishment magazine?”; and a promiscuity-loving Blue Fairy offering her body with a “ding-ding-ding, soup’s up!”, before splurting out, “What am I gonna do with all this soup?” when rejected. That was class. The show is absolutely packed with quality.
Would you look at the predicament we’re in – this time I think this might be the end
BTP is a very happy play played at a very happy pitch. It runs like an express train on rails – no wavering, no wobbling, just full of wit & wonders. But beneath the parody there is also plenty of genuine pathos, sticking faithfully to the profound questions posed by the original tale: humanity, transformation & what it actually means to be human. Thus we have Pinocchio, peppered by paparazzi as a superstar & completely addicted to a hard drug called Donk; Jiminy Cricket’s fellow addiction providing some of the funniest dialogue in the whole show, especially when he is so far off it that he feels capable of killing God.
Life’s not a box of chocolates, life’s a box of cut up pieces of poop
The omniscient deity also appears, via his number-one representative on Earth: the Pope. This surreal intervention acts as a sort of deus ex machina, getting the story into the belly of the whale while simultaneously behaving rather like the Emperor in Star Wars – another superb scene in a show positively overflowing with them.
My dad died doing what he loved – drink driving!
I enjoyed this supersolid block of comedy gold so much that I went back the following evening, ostensibly to get better photographs – and had even more fun. Big Tobacco’s Pinocchio is, at least for me, already a cult classic: I was laughing at all the same bits, but this time with warmer enthusiasm & even louder guffaws. Best of all, tho’, was the appearance of Pinocchio’s real dad: a speaking, “bitch-ass ethereal” tree. It was one of the highlights of this year’s Fringe for me, & yet another sign that 2026 has turned out to be a positively halcyonic vintage.
Damo
