“What the hell am I watching?’ This thought occurred to me more than once while watching Giuseppe’s Game Time Wonder Show at The Courtyard of Curiosities. Looking around the room, during one unhinged segment, I saw a boxer fighting an inflatable palm tree, a human-sized cat rolling about on the floor, two performers looking for an audience member's glasses and the host hunched over with his hands in his head. At any other time of the day, I would call this calamitous, but at 11 p.m. on a Friday, it is called Giuseppe’s Game Time Wonder Show.

I think there are rules to this loose game show. Unfortunately, the only person who seems to know them is our Italian host Giuseppe (Jeromaia Detto). With two special Fringe guests taking part in the game (Britt Plummer and Will Spartalis), plus a special guest judge, Rocky Stallone (Sam Dugmore), participants are put through a challenging series of segments before the winner is chosen. There’s a particularly tough general knowledge quiz, hat tossing, marshmallow eating, and even Play-Doh sculpture. The end result is utter chaos. For one, it doesn’t seem like the participants, or the guest judge, for that matter, knew what they were there for. And two, at 11 pm, there were quite a few drunk people in the crowd who had no fear in yelling out practically anything during the show. The finished product: unintentional comedy, unfiltered laughter, and a whole lot of unhinged artists. A special mention has to go to Kat on tech, who helped carry this show and bring many laughs to the shenanigans happening onstage. 

Some things worked, some things didn’t, but this is what I’d expect from a late-night Fringe show. You don’t want to be hearing long-winded speeches or concentrating on performances this late in the evening. This is a show where audiences and the performers let loose and where anything goes. But was it how host Giuseppe had pictured it going? Who Knows!

***1/2 Three and a Half Stars