It is probably best not to ask too many questions. I mean, you could imagine Lou Doyle and Trevor White wanted their show to be about achieving the impossible and alighted on the phrase “pigs might fly” to encapsulate their vision. That would explain a scenario in which two animals leave their pigsty, disguise themselves as human beings, get past the check-in desks and gain employment as part of the cabin crew on a budget airline. These pigs really do fly.
But that would be to seek a rationale for a show that does everything it can to defy logic. The pair may equally be the “flamin’ hot crash fetishists” described in the fringe programme. They certainly have a perverse interest in high-altitude accidents and emergency landings, even if they also have snouts and tails.
No, it is more fruitful to take Pigs Fly Easy Ryan as you find it: messy, exuberant and daft, complete with cabaret aesthetics, shoogly acrobatics and feverish monologues, not to mention cross-dressing and undressing. Directed by Kendra A Miller for Nonstop, Pigs Fly Easy Ryan is staged with such devil-may-care gusto it gives you neither time nor inclination to figure out the method in their madness.
There is a bit of a theme bubbling up between the in-flight announcements: something about the irresponsibility of flying during a climate emergency and the obscenity of waste generated in the name of affordable luxury. The show is the theatrical equivalent of a plastic waste dump, a place where the world’s excesses wash up, noisily and disordered, powering a manic, apocalyptic physical comedy.
Hard to say whether they are angered or turned on by the evils of trash culture but, as they take joyful dives down the blow-up evacuation slide in this 2025 Untapped award winner, it is easy to enjoy the bumps and jolts of their turbulent flight.
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At the Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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