Claire Sullivan: I Wish I Owned A Hotel for Dogs, Gilded Balloon Teviot, review

Claire Sullivan’s I Wish I Owned A Hotel For Dogs, at Gilded Balloon Teviot, is endearing in its absurdity but often leaves the audience searching for a punch line.

The theme of the night is the absurd. And dogs. As the audience enters the Balcony at Gilded Balloon Teviot for I Wish I Owned A Hotel for Dogs, they are met by Sullivan – dressed as an iceberg – who proceeds to melt into a puddle on the ground. She slaps on a techno beat and launches into a costume change whilst sarcastically chanting “I am Woman”, setting the tone for the bizarre, somewhat disjointed set that is to follow.

The show feels like a brainstorm. Material is chopped together in (seemingly) no particular order, to the point where Sullivan herself is looking at the mountain of props around her, searching for a clue as to what comes next. The agenda includes impressions, short stories, a poem, a quiz and, of course, a dog show, in which Sullivan dons homemade dog masks and struts the stage as a voiceover imparts a series of (almost) facts about each breed. She never hovers for more than a minute on each segment – her pace and energy is both endearing and exhausting.