Theatre review: Constantinople

IT'S amazing how quickly word of mouth travels on the Fringe. I rock up to the venue half an hour early and tell the bar staff I'm looking for Constantinople.

"Oh they'll be here soon. They'll be wearing togas. You can't miss them. The other day they were offering horse massages in the street."

One of the barmen produces a flier with a scribbled review tacked onto it. "This is them. He says. It says: 'Unstructured' Unstructured is right."

A group of giggling girls turn up. "We are looking for the men in togas," they say. Good lord, what is going on?

Sure enough a man in a toga shows up. He shows us into a weird karaoke room with vinyl sofas and walls decorated with murals of the ancient world. He very sweetly offers us grapes, polishing them on his toga and shows us to our seats, after which another nice man comes and takes orders for drinks.

This is a show full of nice surprises. The performers are actor and DJ Barnie Duncan and fellow New Zealander Trygve Wakenshaw.

Together they take us on a tour of Constantinople, showing how the city was founded, introducing a high-maintenance horse with its own masseur and a decadent nightlife fuelled by pepper instead of cocaine.

Their storytelling is full of buoyant absurdist humour, inspired comic mime and musical mixes which are a punchline in themselves. It all feels really rather special and you feel you are discovering something genuinely exciting and new. These two really know how to ambush their audience and while a lot of the humour is visual, there are also some genuinely funny lines.

Duncan is a marvellously funny performer while Wakenshaw throws himself into his supporting roles with charming good humour. Duncan normally performs solo and there is a slight skills gap - but the two work brilliantly together. The fairy dust in the air could be from the birth of a new double act.

What with the grapes, the wine the weirdness and the nice surprises, an hour slips by in the twinkling of an eye.

• Electric Circus (venue 98)