Scotland

Boy In A Box – Guilded Balloon Patter House

There is something wonderfully unsettling about Paul Coates’ Boy in a Box. This is a single hander that treads a remarkably fine line between humour and some very dark places indeed, including suicide, while somehow finding room for what becomes a fascinating, if increasingly unhinged, lecture on American history.

And the box is not theoretical. It is right there.

Every now and again, a thump comes from inside it. Whatever, or whoever, is in there wants out: the disenfranchised, the silenced, the forgotten majority? We are told one thing with certainty, whatever is in the box is definitely not white.

So, what is it? Black? Brown? Asian? Honduran? All of them? And, more importantly, who is willing to open the box and find out?

Coates veers between appearing like a madman losing control before us and delivering a carefully structured history lecture. It is a fascinating balancing act. The sweep of that history is enormous, reaching back to the Wampanoag people, long before the slave ships that would reshape America, through Chinese immigration during the Gold Rush and onwards to the incarceration of Japanese Americans at places including Manzanar.

These are not comfortable histories, and Coates is interested particularly in those parts of America’s story that have been suppressed, simplified or conveniently forgotten.

What makes Boy in a Box work as theatre rather than simply polemic is that persistent physical presence at the centre of the room. The box keeps interrupting the lecture. It refuses to remain metaphorical. Something is inside it, something has been contained, and something wants to be heard.

And one thing is certain, Boy in a Box is definitely not going to send you to sleep. There have been a few shows threatening to do just that this Fringe. Not this one. You are kept alert, slightly uncomfortable and never entirely sure where Coates is going to take you next.

A little gem of a show which frequently threatens to be significantly greater than the sum of its parts and beautifully showcases all 50 years of Coates’ lifetime in the theatre business, with a performance full of nuance and subtle gesture. It is funny, provocative, occasionally disturbing and deliberately difficult to pin down. Most importantly for a single hander, there is a wonderful control beneath the apparent chaos. The madman and the professor are perhaps not so far apart after all.

And is there really whiskey in that hipflask? I think so, but (like the unopened box) unless you accept the offer, you will never know.

Playing until August 30th 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026BOYINAB

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 15th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating: