POTTY THE PLANT
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★★★★★
“Theatrical brilliance.”
In ancient Greek theatre, at the end of a play, the deus ex machina would descend to tidy things up. But let’s not rush—let’s leave that thought where it belongs: at the end of this review.
The house lights dim. A spotlight reveals a humble flowerpot on a table. Inside, a retracted plant slumbers. A plant at rest.
Suddenly—the sun! A dazzling, joyful sunbeam bursts through the open window, embodied by an actor in a gloriously over-the-top solar headdress. It’s brilliant, whimsical, cheeky theatre magic.
From the pot emerges Potty the Plant (Baden Burns). The audience can hardly resist applauding such a delightfully theatrical entrance. Enter, too, the trio of hospital nurses: Mel (Stephanie Cubello), Steven (Sam Ridley), and Dave (Joe Winter). To call them “back-up” would be a crime—they are the lifeblood of Little Boo Boo General Hospital. They are day and night, sun and moon, crime-solvers, chaos-makers, losers of coma victims, and keepers of the show’s irrepressible energy. This is an ensemble piece. Sure, there are standout solos sprouting like new shoots, but the joy lies in the enchanted forest, not the individual trees.
But where there is light, darkness must follow. Enter the sinister Dr Acula (Ash K-B). Yes, that blood-sucking fellow from Transylvania—or is he? Something suspicious lurks in the hospital, where people vanish with unnerving regularity. What’s certain is that K-B commands the stage with vocal brilliance and magnetic presence: half-Buster Keaton, half-bloodthirsty mischief.
Meanwhile, Potty harbours a tender love for Miss Lacy (Lucy Appleton). She calls herself an “easy girl,” yet struggles to truly connect. She is the perfect twisted ingénue—sweet as petals, but with a wild streak in her foliage. She waters Potty, never realising how deeply his love runs. Humans falling for plants is called phytophilia—but can a plant return the favour with anthropophilia? Potty does. And in this world, where absurdity and joy reign, anything is possible.
Potty the Plant began life as a film project, and thank goodness it sprouted into a stage musical. Sometimes the best art grows in the strangest soil. The six-person cast is riotously joyful: charming, foul-mouthed, irreverent, and utterly inclusive. With a witty libretto, glorious harmonies, and musical theatre sparkle, this is a fringe show that takes a minuscule stage and blossoms into a universe. The props are ingenious; every secret is in plain sight, just like life. Songs like I Don’t Care are cheeky delights.
Baden Burns is sensational as Potty. Puppetry, after all, is alchemy. With a flick of a leaf, a tilt of the head, a smirk or grin, the puppet becomes a person. We believe. We forget he is cloth and wire; he is. Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am”—well, Potty loves, therefore he truly is. Puppets have always been theatre’s tricksters and truth-tellers, distilling human experience into something at once more concentrated and more universal.
Behind the magic are three clever minds: Baden Burns, Aeddan Sussex, and Sarah Oakland. They’ve taken a seedling of an idea and nurtured it into a sprawling, whimsical world. Neve Pearce’s reimagining of the puppet is ingenious—Potty shifts between being rooted and mobile, and even grows into a large-scale version for a dream ballet. Theatrical brilliance.
And now, back to the Greeks. At the end of their dramas, the deus ex machina—literally “god from the machine”—would appear, usually lowered in by crane, to resolve the unresolvable. In Potty the Plant, Potty himself is the deus ex machina. He’s with us the whole way, teaching that life is gloriously, irreverently absurd: where a jubilant sun dances with a groovy moon, where theatre laughs at itself even as it explains why it exists at all.
By the end, you find yourself in love with Potty the Plant—becoming a proud phytophile. And what could be more brilliantly theatrical than that?
POTTY THE PLANT
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Reviewed on 17th August 2025 at Braeburn at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower
by Louis Kavouras
Photography by Roan Lenihan (from previous production)
