Review: My Dog’s Got No Nose - Bungay’s Fisher Theatre

Being billed as a comedy, and the title it has, understates what is a wonderful piece of theatre enjoyed by all-too-small an audience on Saturday night.

Yes, there is comedy in the first half of this play by Ron Aldridge, and brought to the stage by Noted for Music, as a would-be stand-up comedian prepares for his first show – practising, agonising, self-doubting as he awaits his cue to go on.

And we learn of his unsatisfactory marriage to Julie, and her sister’s mundane marriage to husband Roger.

But this one-man performance, brilliantly put over by Giles Shenton, is so much more than that as it all evolves in the second half. It is a story full of feelings, the whole gamut of emotions, frustration, anger, pathos and tragedy. It absorbs the audience fully as it moves to its dramatic conclusion, and puts one in mind of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads television plays of a few years ago. It is the tears of a clown – exploring one man’s personal life usually hidden by the make-up and the buzz of entertaining an audience.

Saturday’s visit to the Fisher was only its third showing so far. The small audience was privileged to be entertained, and have its emotions thoroughly massaged, by such a thought provoking and high quality production.

TERRY REEVE