C soco
5 - 31 Aug, 8:00pm (8:50pm)

It's a real Marmite show, this one; we can't be sure if you'll love it or hate it, but we promise you won't have seen its like before.  Billed as a cowboy tale set in the Arctic, it's a curious one-man adventure, featuring a talking moose head and an invisible polar bear.  But it's also an intriguing psychological drama: touching, funny and thoughtful, too.

The plot revolves around Chester James, an Aussie bush-man and author who, we find, is stranded in a bunker near the North Pole.  As the play develops, though, we learn that Chester's exile is partly self-imposed - and as the fragmentary memories of his past life are revealed like the clues in a detective story, we piece together a compelling tale of stellar success gone sour.

We saw A Fistful Of Snow at May's Brighton Fringe, where actor Danny Alder won the prestigious Latest 7 "Oscar" for the best male performer.  We were equally impressed by the writing, too.  "It's a cleverly self-referential plot," we said, "which blurs the boundaries of invention and reality ... even by the end of it all, you won't be sure you've quite pieced together what was really going on."

But first and foremost, this is a very funny show - with the offbeat detours of Chester's mind including song-and-dance numbers and, yes, that talking moose.  So abandon your expectations, keep an open mind... and maybe you'll find the oddball highlight of your Fringe.