Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Animal (Are you a proper person?), Gilded Balloon, review: 'A shot of uncomplicated joy'

Using spirit animals as a way into talking about accepting who you really are is the charming conceit at the centre of Animal (Are you a proper person?)

Chris Redmond and Anna Freeman in Animal (Steph Dray)

What’s your spirit animal? It’s one of those perennial questions, a classic of pillow talk or chat between friends on long train journeys; you probably know yours. And if you do, you’ll also know that you can’t choose your spirit animal: it just is. You might long to be a sleek panther, but really you need to embrace your inner duck.

Using spirit animals as a way into talking about accepting who you really are is the charming conceit at the centre of Animal (Are You a Proper Person?). And if you’re looking for a shot of uncomplicated joy on the fringe, Animal comes highly recommended. The first stand-alone production from Tongue Fu, a spoken-word night with a live band, it sees writers Chris Redmond and Anna Freeman delving back into their teenage years to look at how they grew into their spirit animals, and themselves. The Dave O’Brien Orchestra – actually just one man, but one who’s a whizz on the keys – provides the backbone of musical accompaniment, with Freeman and Redmond picking up musical instruments during the show too.

Lightly interactive, the audience are encouraged to offer our spirit animals up for O’Brien to play a theme tune to, before Redmond and Freeman take us back to their awkward youths, and animal “origins stories”. Donning daffy wigs, Redmond and Freeman play each other as kids. He was a mop-headed nerd whose life changed when a poodle-haired rock enthusiast named Derek taught him the drums, and encouraged him to “let the pig out”. Freeman, meanwhile, was the gangly, skinny child of hippie parents: when dancing in an African drumming circle run by a woman named Aura (she dropped the L), it is sniggeringly observed that Freeman looked like flamingo. She was not best pleased.

With wit and warmth, they re-enact stories of growing up, into gradual adult acceptance of the self – from disastrous first blowjobs to finding yourself by playing piggishly raucous music at Hackney warehouse parties, from being in denial about being gay to coming out as a fabulous, fierce pink lesbian flamingo who can work the room at glitzy literary parties.

Redmond exhibits his performance poetry chops while Freeman, a novelist who’s also a slam poet, also has no problem standing her material up on two (slender, flamingo-long) legs. With graphs charting their progress and songs to quicken the pace, this is a lightweight but lovely lo-fi show. Sure, the “embrace your real self” message is hardly controversial or indeed new, but it’s packaged up here with a very human touch.

Whatever you spirit animal, the show will leave you ready to roar, whinny, squeak or quack from the rooftops.