In a word, Sensational is.

Well worth staying in town for after you’ve seen another Fringe show (it starts at 10:30pm in the Bergman Theatre at the Paramount and runs for an hour), it is wonderfully fresh, compulsively engaging and touchingly funny.

Written and directed by Robert Ellis and Francesca Emms, who also performs, it is something of a mosaic in that the whole is made up of fragments. Having come to it from Couch Soup, I thought I was in for another sketch show but no, Sensational is a cumulative experience that grows in depth, breadth and wit as it plays out.

Of the characters richly drawn by six very talented young actors, five are closely linked to one sense each, which drives their behaviour and brings them into each other’s orbit. Structurally it is not unlike a Robert Altman film, as its separate strands begin to inter-weave …

Henry, (Jonny Potts making weird look totally credible) may hang out in the forecourt of Te Papa these days but he has travelled. He is in touch, with touch. And he’ll go a long way to get it. He has also brought himself back a mail order bride, from Russia.

Sonja (Sarah Silver, supremely minimalist) plumbs poignant depths of pathos as a fish out of water until her love of sound – of one voice in particular – brings joy to her otherwise barren life.

The voice in question belongs to commercial recording artiste and would-be-classical actress Rebecca (Francesca Emms, rooting her comedy in truth), whose sense of smell is her pleasure and her downfall.

Her recording producer and unrequited admirer Andrew (a wide-eyed, fresh-faced Benyamin Albert) is ruled by his taste buds, which turns out to be brilliant for Sonja.

Meanwhile culturally sensitive Mere (broadly yet very sincerely accented by Rachel James) is desperate to move on from Mitre 10 Mega to the hallowed halls of Te Papa, where her eye for visual art, and her compendious knowledge of artistic styles, can come to the fore.

More of an everyday Everyman, albeit with a well-toned physique (cue modelling of the sponsor’s product: NUTS boxers), Matthew Wood’s train guard, waiter and Te Papa security guy is not blessed with the sixth sense. But he does complement the others very well.

The material could be trimmed, and a more fluid way of achieving the transitions from scene to scene – rather clunkily done at present by re-arranging chairs – would be very welcome. But nothing can detract from the insightful comedy, compelling anguish and heart-warming happy ending.

In a final word: go.
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