The Pick­le King is on now at the Han­nah Play­house and is a colour­ful, quirky and unique tale of love, death and what is worth pre­serv­ing.

Once the finest hotel in town, the Empire is now as fad­ed as the dreams of the piano play­er who haunts the lob­by. Ammachy runs the Empire with an iron fist and has one big prob­lem, her niece is blind and she will not be mar­ried. Sasha knows she must not mar­ry because she is curse – every­thing she loves dies. Jeena is a heart sur­geon. How­ev­er, as a recent arrival from India the only work she can find is as a night porter in the Empire.

The masked per­form­ers who set the scene and book-end­ed the play were unique and por­trayed emo­tion effec­tive­ly.  For me, Vanes­sa Kumar when play­ing Ammachy was a stand­out char­ac­ter as well as Andrew Ford who played the Pick­le King and brought high ener­gy to his per­for­mance. How­ev­er, I found the romance between Jeena and Sasha to be a hard sell – I didn’t see the con­nec­tion or chem­istry between them.

The masks, cos­tumes, cre­ative use of the set, and ver­sa­til­i­ty of the per­form­ers were all excep­tion­al and makes the whole show very appeal­ing to the sens­es. Speak­ing of, the tal­ent­ed pianist made for an inter­est­ing dynam­ic with this musi­cal abil­i­ties — it was also a cool touch that he was a ‘straight man char­ac­ter’ for the come­di­ans to play off.

The show is very fringey… which of course makes sense con­sid­er­ing it won the ‘Fringe First Award’ in 2003 at the Edin­burgh Fringe (one of many awards the show has won since first per­formed in 2002).

Over­all the show was very enjoy­able! It’s on until 9 Sep­tem­ber – book your tick­ets today!