The Man in the Mail was that show for this year's Fringe.
This solo show by Joshua Phillips is incredibly sweet and cleverly conceived and executed, with Phillips playing "the man in the box" who started as "the boy in the box" but then travelled the world having increasingly fanciful and exotic adventures and now finds himself here.
One of the tiny details that I love is that as far as I can remember, Phillips never leaves the space bounded by his wooden box once he opens it to the audience's gaze. It's a tiny thing and one that's easily missed, but once i realised it it made me smile.
The design of the box and all it's props is likewise wonderful, with everything perfectly placed, and containing a number of small details that never really get shown off, but are there anyway.
Part play and part circus/physical theatre, the show sometimes takes its time getting from A to B, but given the theme of the show, it's definitely more about the journey than the destination. Phillips does a small number of tricks, but does them well and with a lot of personality, including a couple that I really haven't seen other people do before, one including balancing on sticks and the other including a door.
I did find myself a little more involved than I've been in most of the shows this year as I was called on first as "chair passer" and then as "hat catcher and thrower", which as anyone who knows me can tell you is not my forte. And it's remarkably difficult to get a hat to fly in a straight line. But I didn't do too badly overall.
This is definitely a show that it's worth your time to get better acquainted with.
yani's rating: 4 black top hats out of 5
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