Coco the Time-Travelling Tart has stepped out of our screens onto the stage at The Yurt in The Courtyard of Curiosities at Adelaide Fringe for the world premiere of her live show which carries her name.

For the unfamiliar, Coco the Time-Travelling Tart is a character created by Max Norman, a British award-winning actor and character comedian. Coco’s videos have over 30 million views, and she has more than 185,000 followers on Instagram and Tiktok. It’s often difficult to know how someone you see in 3 minute videos on social media can translate to a one hour in person performance, but Coco The Time-Travelling Tart proves we need not worry.

From the second all 7 foot of her first appeared at the door to the Yurt that served as our theatre, the audience was hooked. A champagne fuelled, connoisseur of the finer things in life, Coco The Time-Travelling Tart is on a mission to find her pearl earring before she goes to Napoleon’s ball. What do you do when you need to find something? You retrace your steps of course, and with that the audience is taken on a journey in a London cab to various places and periods in time in search of Coco’s earring.

Over the hour we travel back to Elizabethan times, to Egypt, Eden, we meet a minotaur in Crete, visit the Louvre, Delphi, and London in war time, all in search of Coco’s missing earring.

The whole of the audience is encouraged to get involved, whether it be joining Coco in her movements as we are thrown about the London cab on our journeys to the various periods and places, or helping in the form of some of the characters she interacts with along the way. Audience participation is never forced, and interaction is playful, never with the aim of making any audience member the butt of the joke. We are simply characters in her story.

Max Norman has trained clowning at École Philippe Gaulier, and his skills shine through Coco. His physicality and comic timing keep the audience completely absorbed, even as the story joyfully spirals into absurdity. Norman even tests his hand at puppetry in a hilariously ridiculous battle scene with battling Coco dolls.

Coco The Time-Travelling Tart is a light-hearted hour of time-travelling, champagne-soaked, dirty humoured fun.  It’s camp, clever, and perfectly suited to the Adelaide Fringe crowd. Anyone who likes the absurd, time-travel, or just a rollicking good time, book your tickets because you won’t be able to travel back in time to catch it if you miss out.

4.5 CROISSANTS

Matilda Marseillaise was a guest of Adelaide Fringe