Our first review is in!

Review: HORSE, New Wolsey Studio, Ipswich

by Peter Crouch-Pearce 

Anyone thinking of popping along to see Flick Ferdinando’s latest outing, Horse, should heed this warning well: Leave minors and maiden aunts at home and have your sides reinforced.  

Ferdinando brings joy to the Pulse fringe festival but the humour is deliciously crude and not for those of a sensitive disposition. As the title might suggest, everything equine is the topic and Ferdinando adopts character after character, from the sultry opening in basque and yellow Marigolds to the slightly psychotic – and horsey – Irish nun.  

This one-woman show delights on every level and had the audience in uproarious laughter from the beginning.  

There’s no plot to speak of but, despite numerous costume transformations, Ferdinando moves with ease between each segment of her superb performance, keeping her audience enthralled and chuckling throughout.

Ferdinando’s Company FZ is no stranger to performance theatre, having presented the pretty yawn-inspiring Throat some years ago; however, Horse is light years beyond in its approachability.  

Whether she’s sitting provocatively astride a bale of hay in jodhpurs, prancing in fishnets atop a gymnasium horse, or rising Venus-like from a tin drinking trough – complete with genuine water – in a glittering evening gown, Ferdinando’s pace slows for not an instant.  

Amid all of the raucous humour, though, there are moments of raw sensitivity but even these are tempered with a wry look. In Horse, directors John-Paul Zaccarini and Derek Ives have created a surreal little universe that Ferdinando makes entirely believable.  

In saying that, we wouldn’t change one smutty syllable.

For all its merit, it’s difficult to ascertain where Horse might have a future. It could certainly tour the late-night cabaret circuit and the various fringe festivals, but its adult content limits its potential.  

Thank you to Paul from all here at Company FZ!