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The Guardian

Pickled Republic review – a curious cabaret of jarring vegetables

We can agree that a cabaret involving pickled vegetables is conceptually funny. The stars of a variety night do not normally count gherkins, onions and carrots among their number, not even lower down the bill. We might also share an interest in what creator and performer Ruxandra Cantir has to say about the obsession with pickling in her native Moldova. But what next? That Cantir chooses to remain tight-lipped about the culinary habits of her home country is no big deal, nor even the little this show says about the theme of life, death and preservation. That she has so few ideas about what to do with her pickled vegetables having introduced them, surely is. They look striking. Designed by Fergus Dunnet in Shona Reppe's production, part of the Made in Scotland showcase, they are bold and imaginatively conceived. To play an onion, she yanks a white knitted jumper over her head and reveals a tuft of stringy hair. Her potato is a dirty amorphous lump, its chits growing over the course of the show. The gherkin is huge, tall, erect, very green – and likes dancing. The tomatoes are just tomatoes and with each punchline of a corny joke they get pulped into ketchup. So far so striking, but with the exception of some lipsyncing to a witty song by John Kielty and an apocalyptic speech by a baby carrot, she has nowhere to take her creations. She uses clown and mime techniques to illustrate being trapped in a pickle jar, timidly suffering unrequited love or anxiously waiting to be picked for consumption, but too few ideas to justify the length of each scene. Rather, the show is reliant on the enthusiasm of an admittedly willing audience to slip into cabaret mode and cheer on each new vegetable as though it were a work of genius. Without their whoops and hollers, it would seem a very thin piece of work. At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews