Minnie and Mona Play Dead ***

My first day of the Fringe had more surrealism than most and Minnie and Mona Play Dead certainly had a degree of weird about it.

It's a play about suicide, but it's funny... says the flyer.

When I took the ticket I knew it was a bit of a gamble... How funny can a play about suicide be?

It turns out that the warnings about the play being about that are overstated. It's mentioned a few times and there are 1-2 deliberately provocative mentions but overall, it's pretty tame compared to other stuff I've seen at the Fringe that didn't have such warnings... and there were quite a few laugh out loud funny moments in the play as well.

The best bit of the play was the two actors who were very into their characters, had a high degree of professionalism and didn't even come close to fluffing a line (an achievement on day one).

The worst part for me was that the storyline was slightly over-layered. When you get a play about people putting on a play things can get confusing and although I followed the plot and the sub-plot it was kind of hard work to keep up. I like to relax into a show and enjoy the performance without having to think too hard and when the actors go from playing themselves (but still in character) to playing their actual character you feel you have to concentrate a little bit harder.

Again that's very much just my opinion and others might enjoy the complications and call me too simplistic.

But overall I was impressed with the show and I definitely would see the same theatre company put a different play on (although I wouldn't be so keen to see a different theatre company put on the same play).