It’s hard to categorise this show, but it’s essentially a piece of stand up combined with a lot of clowning.  The clowning animates an hour-long monologue that circles the issues raised by an obsession, in this case getting married before your twenty-seventh birthday.

There are a number of sketches – narrative moments which take us to a ball, a lunatic asylum and the house of an aged aunt.  Jane Austen is invoked along the way, of course, but so is Fleabag, the intention being to show the continuity of the central issue over two hundred years.  Love Island is not referenced, probably due to copyright issues. Depth and range are added to the stories by the use of black and white film clips shown on the backdrop which are punctuated by ironic remarks.  There are a lot of asides and a lot of audience participation, with one hapless individual being invited on stage to play a prospective suitor. (He told a good joke.)

The monologuer, comedian Rosaline Minnitt, is energetic and friendly.  She has an appropriate repertoire of facial expressions, and she flips her tones of voice easily.  She can sing and project and imitate accents.  She is confident of her material, throwing everything bar the kitchen sink at her subject.  There is no let-up, but she wins over her audience completely.  I was pleased that in all the verbal torrent there is only one expletive which could have been deleted.

Personally, I was interested and amused rather than blown away.  Still, credit where credit is due.  Most members of a Saturday night audience at Theatr Clwyd are the ‘wrong’ side of 40 and you might have expected them to be staid and unresponsive but Minnitt got on the right side of them/us straightaway.  Everyone sang a bit and we waved little electric lights in the air on cue  One of the high points of the evening was an audience member’s rendition of a screech owl’s call.

Not being either overwhelmed or partisan, I was well placed to appreciate how much effort had been put into the show by ensuring the incomprehensible storylines stayed on a crazy track.  The technical back up was efficient.  Lighting and sound effects happened – apparently – on time and the film clips ran smoothly (things like that have a habit of going wrong on the night).

In the end, the stage was left in a mess, with Clementine’s dolly figures of her parents and 67 sisters mixed up with the scores of love/hate letters that fluttered down at one point, but despite everything she had been doing for an hour, Minnitt still looked fresh and up for her next performance.  I’d be curious to see what she and Liebenspiel do get up to next.  It would be nice to see her working with or off another performer or two and -tackling a subject a tiny bit more – demanding?  Just a suggestion.

Photo Credit Kirsten McTernan

Rice is water. 

It’s a statement that makes sense once you stop asking it to behave. It’s also an excellent way into Meet Fred — a show that invites us to loosen our grip on certainty, definition and systems that insist on being right. Walking into the space to a David Bowie track immediately helps me feel settled. It’s a small act of care that signals this is a room where arrival matters, where bodies and minds are allowed to take their time.

 Meet Fred is a quietly assured piece of theatre that reflects Hijinx Theatre’s long-standing commitment to reimagining how learning disability is understood, represented, and lived with on stage. 

Rather than negotiating with the disability models, the production rejects that school of thought entirely, exposing how institutional frameworks repeatedly fail the very people they claim to support. 

At its heart, the show is about identity — how we find out who we are, and how others decide who we should be. Fred reminds us that we can be more than one thing simultaneously.

 He is a puppet, (who f*****g loathes the Muppets and don’t get him started about children) He is also sensitive and kind (his attempts to compliment are legendary), foul-mouthed and funny, fearful of change and incandescent with anger at systems that do not work for him. His fury, particularly when directed at the DWP — reimagined as the Department of Work and Puppets — lands with sharp humour while pointing clearly to institutional failure rather than individual deficit. 

Structure becomes a form of care. The board outlining each plot point serves as a reminder of what is to come — reassuring, steady, and revealing how much comfort there can be in knowing what happens next. Routine here is not mocked or overcome; it is respected. Access is not added on but fully integrated. The interpreter is woven into the show, moving through the space and responding to the cast in real time. 

Responding to subtitles is strange at first — a productive strangeness — reminding us that genuine integration requires adjustment from everyone, to feel at home having 3 languages available simultaneously, not just those most often asked to adapt.

 The use of music carry cases is remarkably simple and yet transformative. As they move, the space reshapes itself, demonstrating how environments are continually constructed — and how small shifts can radically change experience.

 Each performer is given moments of focus, paying homage to the collective labour and care that animates the piece. I found myself noticing how white the room and the stage were. 

It didn’t undo the care or intelligence of the work, but it did linger — a reminder that access and representation are not the same thing, and that some stories are still easier to tell than others. Those moments on stage hold humour, tenderness, and fury — particularly the anger that comes when a support system is removed or withdrawn. This rage is not softened or made palatable; it is held as a justified response to systemic neglect. Silence is one of the production’s most powerful tools. Here, silence feels safe, not abandoning. It slows time, holds the space, and allows us to root for Fred without explanation. Even as a faceless bunraku-style puppet, he feels profoundly human — shaped by attention, care and collective effort.

 For those familiar with Housemates, Meet Fred feels like a continuation of Hijinx Theatre’s essential work. It does not ask for a better world — it demonstrates one, and trusts the audience to recognise it. 

 Meet Fred left me thinking about how often we celebrate access without interrogating who that access is currently working for.

 The production models care, patience and integration with clarity and confidence, yet the lingering whiteness of the space suggests that inclusion is never a finished task — even within work that resists dominant systems. This doesn’t diminish the power of the piece. If anything, it sharpens its relevance. 

By rejecting institutional logic around disability, Meet Fred opens the door to further questions about race, visibility and whose bodies are most often permitted to take up space — gently, slowly, and without having to explain themselves. Like the show itself, this reflection isn’t a demand. It’s an invitation: to notice, to stay with the discomfort, and to imagine how care might expand if we keep asking who is still missing.

You can find our more about the production and book tickets for the current tour at the link here