Gamarjobat *****

Gamarjobat are a pair of distinctive and expressive Japanese comedy mime artists, specialising in humourous magic routines and mime theatre. 

After the first twenty minutes of hilarious mime and magic, the audience is left in no doubt as to how to pronounce their name, as they have divided us into three sections ('Ga', 'Mar' and 'Jobat' respectively) and then use us to conduct a gigantic remix by getting us to shout out our allocated parts. Very funny, especially as they berate and scold us throughout for getting timing wrong or not being loud enough.

Then we're into the second half of the show, and definitely my favourite. This is The Western, during which the duo use expressive and clever mime to act out a typical tale from the Wild West, featuring gun showdowns, lynchings and romance. 

Yep, romance. By two Japanese blokes with mohicans. Although the tale is shot through with some excellent comedic moments, the story centres on one man's struggle for revenge, aided by a beautiful Spanish senorita...they pull this off excellently, and there's some true emotion and pathos in there that is actually very moving in parts.

Gamarjobat are firm festival favourites, and seem to appear all over Edinburgh during the Festival (at their shows, doing their magic routine on the High Street, Fringe Sunday etc). They have an appeal to young and old alike (although some of the younger kids were a bit lost by some of the nuances in The Western) and, although I've seen a lot of their act before, I never get tired of them.