“Never has the phrase ‘And then I dismembered the body…’ caused so much glee in an actor and revulsion in an audience. Using nothing more complicated than sticks of celery, a saw, dripping water, and a selection of large and small citrus fruits, and the collective audience, we were treated to the most suggestively gory, but cleanest scene imaginable.”

“What makes this play so excitable, and doused in dark humour, is that Simon shares the stage with a sound artist – Iain Armstrong. As Simon retells the story, Iain provides the sounds from a table of strange and fascinating props. Dismembering flesh is a knife through a melon, twisting off the old’s man arms and legs becomes crunching celery, and blood dripping from his loose bones is water trickling into a tin bowl. In fact, the audience are in awe of what prop will be used next – the most gruesome of which is a knife through an orange as Simon self-mutilates himself on stage. The play certainly makes you look at fruit in a whole different way!”

“Armstrong alone is worth watching, as he commands his sound desk, juggling fruit, laboratory equipment and kitchen appliances making sure to hit the more than 200 sound cues. The results are, often, extraordinary. From the bigger set piece moments (the bloody dismembering of a body, for example) down to the subtle nuances that pepper the piece (footsteps on a floorboard; the creak of an opening door) the effect it leaves on its sometimes squirming audience is profound. Similarly, in his role as Doctor, Armstrong is perfectly constrained, his soft Scottish brogue coming through the tinny microphone never detracts from the main events of the piece, which belong to Saunders’ Simon.”