The first thing we encounter as we enter tonight is a sign indicating ‘audience participation’. We make a mental note to sit further back from the front rows. The second thing is a personal greeting from Elf Lyons herself. This will be repeated as we leave at the end of the show. It’s something Elf does.

Being rather new to this sort of thing, that is, never having seen a play performed entirely by a horse before, I am unsure what to expect. Thankfully Treacle the narrator has brought along a whole assortment of horse characters to tell their story. Suddenly we are seeing and hearing many moments that we associate with horses – dressage, racing, horses as transport, and so on – being told from the horse’s point of view.

The pace of this show is rapid fire and you need to pay constant attention to keep up with everything that is going on. With a heady mix of mime, recorded voices, inventive jokes, clowning and theatre – Elf studied under Philippe Gaulier in the Bouffon comic style of theatre – we are led on a wild ride indeed! Some of the jokes are screamingly funny – a young Icarus learning to deal with having wings, a young horse who would rather be a lion, the whole Trojan Horse debacle.

When the audience participation segments arrive – there are several – they are introduced with the terms ‘Will you come up on stage and play with me?’ Playfulness is a recurrent theme in Horses – when was the last time you stopped doing whatever it is you do as an adult and engaged in a few moments of unfettered childish play?

This is not to say that tonight’s performance is in any way blissfully innocent. There is a deeply black side to every Elf Lyons joke – and the body count both equine and human is a little startling. She does ‘savage’ really well. Even so, we are left with a heartfelt affinity with horses and their lot, and encouragement to reconnect with the child within us all.

After seeing Elf Lyons in Raven last year I decided that a ticket to see her in anything she brought along was an essential part of the Fringe experience. Tonight I was not disappointed.