Mochinosha are back at Edfringe, smashing the world of shadow puppetry with their uniquely stunning signature style. This show will make your brain explode it’s so good!Summary
Rating
Unmissable!
Yeah, yeah, I know Space Hippo has been at the Edinburgh Fringe several times before but I’ve never had the chance to see it! It’s quite widely known that I am now a Mochinosha Puppet Company fangirl, having been both gobsmacked and breathtaken at Shadow Kingdom in 2023 and Shadow Necropolis in 2024.
The team are Canadian Daniel Wishes and Seri Yanai, from Japan, who both perform and create their amazing works. It’s shadow puppetry, but not like anything you have ever seen before – elevated to an extraordinarily complex, choreographed level and with brilliantly entertaining stories that create a kind of anime style. They use literally hundreds of exquisitely crafted pieces to tell a tale; some coloured, some articulated, often layered across each other to create incredible animation effects. There are cross fades, torches and interesting lighting effects, and all the while the duo are narrating the adventure with multiple characterised voices that are brilliantly effective and enormously funny.
Although ostensibly ridiculous, Space Hippo is in fact a particularly moving story that reimagines how we might save our planet from destruction. With only five years left before Earth meets its untimely doom, politicians decide the only way to manage the problem is to send a hippo into space. That’ll do it…. Meeting feuding alien races and becoming worshipped as a goddess (perhaps like the Egyptian Taweret), she is aided by a really cool Lizard Man and her food dispensing robot, who helps her get back to Earth to her baby. At times it’s surprisingly sad, but mostly it’s crazy, exciting, political, emotive and hilarious, with multiple characters all voice-acted by Wishes and Yanai in both English and Japanese.
This production serves it up in spade-loads. It’s funny, aesthetically stunning, complex, clever, poignant, and has a clear and important message of possibility about how we should respect and look after our beautiful, precious world. Space Hippo is a pretty family friendly show, but I’d say particularly great for teens and those who’ve never grown up. It finishes at Edinburgh this weekend but fortunately is on for one night in London at the end of August! There’s no excuse to miss it – we have trains and space rockets!
Created and performed by: Daniel Wishes and Seri Yanai
Produced by: Mochinosha Puppet Company
Space Hippo runs at Underbelly Big Belly as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival until Sunday 24 August, then at Underbelly Boulevard in London on Sunday 31 August.
