Mickey Mouse is Dead

Such nice family films Walt Disney made – so full of humour, sweetness and light. Such a pity that the man himself was a bigoted, ferociously anti-semitic, Red-hating, mother-fixated, union bashing monster.

Justin Sherin’s terrific play looks at the organisation through the eyes of two left-wing writers, Finch and Harris, scripting Mickey and Donald cartoons during the McCarthy era.

Walt is going to name names, so how can they be sure it’s not them? Answer: enlist Finch's girlfriend Grace to penetrate Walt’s inner sanctum and find out.

But can a respectable Connecticut girl get through the defences of a model-train obsessed, nipple-sucking megalomaniac? And if you turn her into a femme fatale can you be sure she won’t turn again?

Here is America in another time of fear, and the fear in the office is overwhelming in the miniscule space of The Pleasance’s Baby Grand. This is close-up theatre at its very best.

The period details and costumes are exact and the acting is simply stunning. James Lloyd Reynolds is all twitchy nervousness as Finch, an alcoholic and chain smoker who really wants to keep his job.

Anthony Manna is Harris, the blue collar fighter who daren’t admit to his Jewish identity. Marney Young as Grace wears her clothes and make-up to the period born and her long description of being in creepy Walt’s office is hypnotically riveting.

This is one of those Fringe shows that arrives as an unknown quantity and ends up as a piece of theatre you wouldn’t have wanted to have missed for the world.