**** 4 stars
Words by Elliot Shawfield
There are countless ways into the mythology of Elvis Presley, but Bloated in Vegas finds a hilarious and unexpectedly fresh one. Jason Cohen plays a gifted Lower East Side tailor plucked from the family business and deposited in 1970s Las Vegas, where he finds himself responsible for the evermore elaborate jumpsuits of an increasingly excessive King.
It is a wonderfully absurd premise, and Cohen commits to it with terrific comic precision. What begins as a brisk, sharply observed character comedy gradually becomes something more interesting: a story about a craftsman trying to hold on to his standards, while the superstar around him becomes ever harder to contain, and the world he’s been deposited in pulls him further from his values.
Cohen and his consummate co-writer & director Michael Schiralli keep the jokes coming, finding both affection and ridiculousness in Elvis’s strange Vegas kingdom. Witty, distinctive and consistently very funny, Bloated in Vegas is a Fringe gem with a superb script and a lovely central performance.
24 – 29 Aug
16:05
Pickle Studio at Greenside @ Riddles Court