There is a queue of people waiting outside the Banshee Labyrinth at 1.50 am. “Is this the cheese man?” “Are you here to see the cheese?” – is the excited chatter of the crowd.
Not all of us can fit into the tiny cinema room at the pub where Richard Gadd once performed his award winning show – pre Baby Reindeer.
“Don’t worry,” Mark Dean Quinn tells us, “People will leave”.
And he’s right, they do. Some unable to cope with the anticipation of waiting to see if there is really any cheese. Some completely failing to sit and watch the cheese eating when it actually begins. One person falls asleep – which Mark Dean Quinn kindly describes as: “a perfectly valid response to the show.”
Aimiable, hospitable but well able to deal with the rowdy elements in the room, Mark Dean Quinn plays with all kinds of tension created by his performance. A glamourous young woman demands to know how much cheese he has actually eaten during the Fringe: “I’m here for the maths”, she yells.
A man who has been to see the show 16 times is here again – and has now become a willing participant. He sits facing the audience so he can see the reactions.
Do we have the endurance as an audience? How will Mark Dean Quinn deal with the next interloper? Will the cheese eating ever begin? Will the cheese eating ever end? Why is there a copy of Bruce Forsyth’s autobiography on the table?
A group of people behind me are discussing Mark Dean Quinn’s mental state. A gang of young men on the front row try to start a chant – and are deftly and elegantly discouraged – in a way which makes them Mark Dean Quinn fans forever.
Adulation is not the point, endurance is not the point, all reactions are valid. And at the end of the show the glamourous young woman hurtles to congratulate Mark Dean Quinn for creating an unforgettable Fringe experience.
“I just want to tell the Cheese Man how much I love him,” she says.
Mark Dean Quinn: Oh No (That’s Not Your Cheese), 1.50 – 2.50 am, Banshee Labyrinth, PBH Free Fringe, until August 25
