Wanted: Maid of all quirk

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) JJJJ Matthew is ten when his father disappears. Now, he’s 31, and attending a support group for “the left behind”, unable to say goodbye, unable to move on. When the body of an unidentified man is found on Saddleworth Moor in December 2015, he is convinced his years of wondering are finally at an end.

Following his successful solo show at the Fringe last year, The Trunk, Max Dickins is back with another melding of fact and fiction, keeping the audience guessing about where one ends and the other begins. The body on the moor, for example, was entirely real, with poison in his blood and a train ticket from Ealing in his pocket, but no ID.

Like The Trunk, The Man on the Moor follows the current trend for storytelling rather than acting, telling and explaining rather than showing, and, while Dickins’ delivery is confident and polished, some will find his writing style a little verbose. But this is a carefully constructed, engaging story which hooks us at the very beginning and doesn’t let go.

When a person goes missing, those closest to them face a choice. Matthew’s mum, for example, “pulled a tarpaulin over the volcano and pretended we didn’t live next to it”, getting on with her life and moving in with a Heston Blumenthal wannabe called Colin.

Others find themselves unable to move on, like Julie from Matthew’s support group, who still leaves a note for her husband every time she goes out, even though he vanished seven years ago.

The Man on the Moor is a reminder of the scale of the problem – more than 200,000 people were reported missing in Britain last year. It also reminds us of how little we really understand another person, even one to whom we are close. SUSAN MANSFIELD Heroes @ Monkey Barrel (Venue 515) JJJJ There’s a disconcerting energy about Lucy Pearman, which makes it almost impossible not to laugh. In this wonky gothic creation, which is her first solo show, she has transformed herself into a downtrodden Edwardian maid. Her character is cheerful, plucky but doomed and Pearman carries us with her on an adventure which rattles along despite making no sense whatsoever.

The maid has a new job, but things aren’t going well. She is being sexually harrassed by her monstrous employer. She’s afraid of being sent to the workhouse. And the soldier she is in love with is nowhere to be found. She is also haunted by a mysterious dark side – whose presence makes itself felt by an otherwordly noise like a tuned-out radio stuck in her throat.

Everything, she tells us, depends on whether or not idiosyncratic and performer Youness Atbane so quietly dedicated to his project, you can never quite write it off.

The artist and choreographer projects himself into a 2045 when a documentary filmmaker, who was born only in 2013, is looking back to the Moroccan arts scene of our present day.

At some point in the future, all the artists will be wiped out, so documentary research will be the only way to reclaim a lost tradition.

All that is baldly stated – Atbane makes no attempt at dramatisation – which accounts for the partly digested texture of the piece.

Yet there is something intriguing about his attempts to see the present with the eyes of the future.

If he’s not giving an amusing potted history of contemporary Moroccan art, in which every object is a metaphor and every metaphor is coopted by the EU, he is recreating his own choreographic pieces (he does a good hand dance on a table top) for a future retrospective. File under eccentric. MARK FISHER the maid can find the perfect cabbage. Although frankly it is hard to see how the perfect cabbage will help in these dreadful circumstances, the maid is determined and she enlists the audience to help.

We read notes for her, help her travel to market and help her look for her soldier boy.

She appeals to us with a mixture of sweetness, desperation and menace and we are eager to assist her in her misguided quest.

Occasionally the mysterious dark side emerges – although it turns out her demons are as confused, ridiculous and impotent as the maid herself.

Pearman, who is a graduate of Philippe Gaulier’s clown school, has a delightfully watchable style.

From the moment she takes to the stage with her battered suitcase and misguided sense of hope, you can’t help but wish her well.

And as the maid battles against life, eager to please, hurtling towards failure, we see cannot help but see ourselves. CLAIRE SMITH thespace @ Jury’s Inn (Venue 260) JJJJ A very British girl in her pyjamas is making a complaint on the night train, deep in the dark, somewhere in Europe. Karina, played by Michelle Fahrenheim, has been spooked by a pair of eyes in her couchette bunk; she demands it be dealt with, though what she’s sneakily hoping for is actually an upgrade to first class.

The perfectly European train guard, George, with a flawless manner and accent delivered by Joshua Jacob, asks her if she really wants him to intervene.

Jacob perfectly conveys the character of the official whose eyes have seen more, know more, than he tells; he’s been here before, on the “train of second chance”.

He warns her repeatedly that if she persists, if she can’t handle the problem herself, “we have to follow the procedure”. Karina wants to find the whole thing hilarious; only slowly does she open her eyes to what she’s done.

This three-hander in the

0 Lucy Pearlman’s clowning around over a cabbage is delightful tiniest space at the top of Jury’s Inn is an exceptional piece of theatre-making, and a powerful, understated examination of the moral choices amid Europe’s refugee crisis.

The performances, including Aya Daghem as the silently beseechful, proudly disdainful Amena, are subtle and skilled, as is the stage choreography, as the drama evolves on a repeating loop. The play is written and directed by Henry C Krempels – a journalist who brings his own considerable reporting to bear on the piece. TIM CORNWELL Summerhall (Venue 26) JJJ The connection between what goes into us and what comes out of us is lost on many people, not just children, so this scatological show from Mamoru Iriguchi is educational as well as entertaining.

Iriguchi starts the show inside a lion – literally. Swallowed whole and still in a predigested state, he’s stuck in the stomach of cuddly big cat Lionel Mclion. Peering out of the costume’s mouthpiece, Iriguchi switches voices to avoid confusion, and a hilarious conversation, essentially with himself, ensues.

Aided by Suzi Cunningham, who steps into the lion costume after Iriguchi exits postdigestion (suitably clad in brown Lycra), our host/teacher goes on to conduct a Q&A session with audience members about bodily functions.

Iriguchi is a quick-witted, natural performer, so all of this works well. But the show falls between two stools, as it were. The lion costume and poo-based humour is a treat for younger audience members, but talk of things being “conceptual” leaves adults laughing and children looking confused.

Iriguchi’s unabashed desire to share his knowledge of what makes a good bowel movement is to be applauded, especially if it gets a few more vegetables down the hatch at home – but if his clever humour is to hit all targets in the audience, he might need to dumb down a tad. KELLY APTER Edgar Huggins always wanted to leave Britain and become a rancher in Australia. Born at the end of the 19th century, he did end up working with horses and leaving the country, although this County Durham farm worker and pit horseman never did make it as far as Australia.

Instead, the Territorial Army volunteer was drafted into the ranks of soldiers who fought in the trenches of the First World War, where he was made groom to the captain of his regiment, and later a horseback messenger.

Edgar’s story is told by his great-nephew Will Huggins in a one-man storytelling presentation told with energy and breathless involvement, occasionally slipping into a kind of loose dialogue between both men, with Will appearing in the form of recorded reminiscences.

Under the direction of Dan Llyweln-williams, Will interprets his great-uncle’s experiences on the front at Ypres with impassioned conviction, describing cases of “operational exhaustion” (shell-shock, in other words) and an unpleasant defence against chlorine gas (“I don’t suppose tying a piss-soaked rag round your face is quite the morale booster you need before you go into battle”).

Yet he also reads between the words and uncovers the post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt of the men who came home from this horror a century ago. DAVID POLLOCK thespace on the Mile (Venue 39) JJ A very broad satire on reality TV, Noose Women derives most of its comedy from throwing around hilariously bad-taste pitches for shows like Pets at War and Chase the Dwarf, as well as a few insider-y jokes about TV production as a culture (‘That plant was an office gift from Eamonn Holmes!’). Unfortunately, that sense of fun gets bogged down under a farcical plot and the satirical edge never gets much sharper than saying “God, look at all these awful people”. NIKI BOYLE