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Size Matters

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow

Four stars

 

Birth, sex and death are pretty much the driving forces in one form or another behind most human drama as we know it. They are the heart of the matter too in the life cycle of a puppet as laid bare in absurdist maverick Mamoru Iriguchi’s latest creation, which previewed in the Citz Studio over the weekend prior to a forthcoming short run at Edinburgh’s Manipulate festival of visual theatre. 

 

Here, Iriguchi and fellow performer Julia Darrouy are Tangerine and Sunshine, a pair of life size puppets playing versions of each other. Introduced by a much smaller narrator puppet that then proceeds to keel over, Tangerine and Sunshine are then taken under the wing of the narrator’s now fully proportioned ghost, who takes them on a trip in which they get to explore all puppets great and small by way of different size versions of themselves. 

 

As opposites attract and one size most definitely does not fit all in certain situations, Tangerine and Sunshine play around like a series of mismatched Russian dolls come to life in a toyshop after dark. As Gavin Pringle’s Narrator talks them through each act of their no strings lives, the effect of this increasingly surreal search for meaning is somewhere between Monty Python and Pirandello. 

 

Co-directed and designed by Iriguchi and Fergus Dunnet, Size Matters is first out the traps from the Vanishing Point company’s winter residency at the Citz. This is followed up in February with a new look at Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s Mistero Buffo, and an excursion into stand-up comedy by actress Alana Jackson in Last Orders. 

 

In the meantime, Size Matters is pulsed by a heart pounding soundscape from Greg Sinclair as Tangerine and Sunshine expand and contract in and out of life as navigated by movement director Suzi Cunningham. As things come full circle and the cycle begins again, what emerges is a close up snapshot of what it means to be human, whoever is pulling the strings. 


The Herald, February 2nd 2026

 

Ends 

 

 

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