Director: Francesca Montanile-Lyons
It begins with a dishevelled Uber Eats driver bursting into the venue searching for a customer named Kevin, only to spot his own iconic artwork lining the walls. “I am not homeless, I am an artist,” Vincent van Gogh declares to a bewildered crowd, realising with mounting fury that the audience paid for tickets while he remains completely broke. “It kind of makes me wanna kill myself… again!”
So begins Donna Oblongata’s brilliantly unhinged, delightfully anarchic hour of fringe theatre. What follows is a satirical assault on the commercialisation of art. Van Gogh slides through a deck of his masterworks being cheapened onto commercial merchandise, before drafting four audience members for a hilarious painting masterclass. Demanding they paint from their deepest trauma, he interrogates them on what noise the colour blue makes and what pets yellow would keep.
The absurdity escalates with thrilling momentum. As Van Gogh delivers a passionate monologue on the true soul of artistic expression, his iconic bandaged ear begins to bleed uncontrollably—splattering him and the venue. Naturally, this leads straight into a disco-lit, bubble-and-confetti-soaked karaoke rendition of Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything for Love”, before culminating in a real-money art auction selling the audience’s fresh paintings. In a stroke of accidental genius, the real-world transaction perfectly mirrors the show’s core: the artist still doesn’t see a penny.
A madcap hour, The Van Gogh Shogh is immersive fringe comedy at its absolute finest.
Runs until 30 August 2026 | Image:
