EdFringe Review: Mark Vigeant: OUT THERE

I’ve wanted to catch Mark Vigeant in action for a couple of Fringes now, and finally it has come to pass. OUT THERE is most certainly a Fringe show; how else to describe a production that takes the entire auditorium as its set, whilst recruiting the audience as props?

Larry, Vigeant’s burn-out engineer, is going it solo in the Alaskan wilderness, and – equipped with faux-foliage and a tea light – you’re going to play the flora and fauna (and a lake). Livestreaming his entry on a big screen, and playing to his chest-harnessed phone from start to finish, Vigeant drops into this impromptu forest, and the fun begins immediately.

Perhaps influenced by the ill-fated Grizzly Man of 2005, and definitely lampooning the ongoing epidemic of content-makers seeking their viral moment, Vigeant takes his audience/the wilderness through a few days of Larry’s big adventures.

From the start, his interactions with the ‘trees and ferns’ – ie us – are a delight. His improvised interactions hit the funny bone continually – this is not his first character-comedy rodeo, and it shows. Far from nervous, he emits such a golden-retriever-esque energy that the audience naturally falls into playing with him. He makes amusing virtues out of quirks of the auditorium – carefully negotiating the tricky incline each time he exits the stage, where he’s set up a tarp abode amongst a thicket of stools and chairs. (I’m not convinced this is quite the right performance space for OUT THERE, but he makes it work).

Equipped with a bow, three foam arrows (health & safety matter), a pen-knife, some fishing line, and a satellite phone, it quickly becomes clear that Larry has more enthusiasm than expertise. He would be, he assures us, utterly doomed if he lost the satellite phone – did anyone say Chekhov’s comedy gun?

“Far from nervous, he emits such a golden-retriever-esque energy that the audience naturally falls into playing with him.“

OUT THERE is a fun ride, that’s for sure – any show which makes such willing moose and bears out of its audience is doing something right. Before our time with Larry ends, we’ll join him on a really unique duck hunt, before marvelling at his somewhat adult-oriented whittling skills. Each night he’ll return to his tarp tent, and stream his thoughts for the day to his single-digit followers, the stars circling into day on the screen whilst he sleeps.

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A Fringe Quickie (#326) with ‘Verity Sharpe: Landlord’s Wet Dream’

Larry isn’t a one-dimensional buffoon; this is a character with heart and hopes, dropped into an absurd situation. He’s capable of wonder at a sky full of fireflies, and of sending love back to his wife, along with his hopes of a different life from the one he left behind. It’s this desperate, delusional hope that drives him out into fresh misadventures every day.

On Mark’s opening performance, I felt there was room to push Larry’s humanity just a little harder, however. It’s clear Vigeant intends you to care for Larry, and he is successful in the main part, but just a little more quiet injected into the spaces between the highly physical theatrics would pay off. I would also scratch out the line about one short scene achieving what it needed to narratively – it’s funny, but it breaks the flow.

This aside, the show builds to a memorable and logically satisfactory finale. You’ll be glad you went to play with Mark Vigeant; it may not be perfect, but it definitely sits in proud comedy with the many imperfect shows I’ve seen over my years which I would gladly experience again.