Tennis

Personal view - you'd be better to save £18 and spend the torturous time taken to sit through this show on YouTube watching the amazing 1981 final, and thus seeing some real art, artistry, grace and talent - rather than this absolute travesty from a couple of absolute grifters. I appreciate tastes and senses of humour vary - and like the earlier reviewer - slapstick comedy dance is not my thing ... so not a good start-point ... - but notwithstanding ...:
- whatever the intention of this show, it told me nothing about the classic 1981 Wimbledon final, the two players, their relationship/struggles, or about the beautiful sport of tennis - whether through the real-er or more absurdish elements ... i actually found it incredibly disrepsectful to Borg/McEnroe - and the to audience.
- 20 minutes at the start where very little happened apart from an irrelevant and massively un-funny recurrig gag about the fact both actors were wearing socks and sandals ...
- torturous audience participation: i) puling audience members onto stage for no obvious purpose, and (cueing bizarre (forced) laugher and even applause from some audience member; ii) the very unappealing prospect of both middle aged men entering the audience and seeming to force thier sweaing bodies onto audience members (I just couldn't look)
- as per earlier reviewer - low quality and clumsy dancing.
- Yes .. tennis is hard to "do" on screen or stage - but here there was basic lack of research into technique (holding the racquet way too far up the handle; not observing that BB played a doble handed backhand though the JM actor somewhat captured a bit of his distinctive style..
- only posiive that I could see - the music was very good as was the sound/production.
0*

oh my god so much fun!! I think we caught the very first performance and had a great time. funny and sweet and loved the audience interaction. the set and sound design are so impressive. second show from the danish showcase I've seen and they deffo know what they're doing. hope don gnu come back with another show next year

We really weren't sure what to make of this... funny at times (in a slapstick way), nostalgic throughout (for tennis fans), and poetic at times (with ballet and physical movement, some of which tended to be very amateurish). If you like absurdist type physical theatre, you would probably enjoy this. We don't and found it fleeting between funny, and boring.

TENNIS is a ton of a fun and VERY different from anything else at the Fringe. It's this awesome mixture of '80s music, documentary footage, ballet and other dance, and pantomime with a fair amount of narration by one of the performers. The performers do integrate their movements far into the audience area, but never in a way that would be embarrassing for the audience. It's a hot time in the theatre and I will see anything Don Gnu does going forward.