Kristen Schaal's new show, The Legend of Crystal Shell, casts her as a half-woman, half-horse who overcomes a lifetime of shame to perform Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. The comedy, which runs at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh until 16 August, is endearing and nonplussing in equal measure.
A Fringe Return
Schaal was a fringe fixture in the noughties, around the time she made her TV name on Flight of the Conchords' sitcom. She was award-nominated in 2008 for her two-hander with Kurt Braunohler, Double Down Hearts. Two decades later, her comedy remains wilfully dotty and insubstantial, as this new show demonstrates.
The show begins with Schaal confined to a cardboard refrigerator-cum-horsebox, shyly announcing herself to the crowd. She emerges to recount her origin story as the progeny of her mum's unlikely tryst with a stallion called Shimmer. We meet her friend Arnold the (suspiciously dormant) mouse, she reads non sequitur poems, and tries to catch fairies in a net.
Plot Developments
Patience may fray until, at the blast of a trumpet, Crystal's long-lost dad makes an appearance. This multiplies the cast, if not the significance, as this wannabe unicorn starts singing about the malfunctioning healing powers of his 'teeny tiny horn'.
Schaal and John Roberts, who plays the father, are compelling performers. The randomness of the play's narrative development is almost audacious, as if they'd set themselves the challenge of accepting every first idea, however arbitrarily it advances the plot.
Sparkle and Metaphor
There are hints, if tenuous, that Crystal's late blooming may be a metaphor for the menopause. If so, it sheds little light but plenty of sparkle, as Schaal's alter ego grows her own twinkling uni-horn and puts a life of meekness behind her.
Schaal's comedy is nothing if not idiosyncratic, easy to admire and usually to indulge. The show plays at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh until 16 August.
