one4review | On 13, Aug 2026

Dame Granny Smith is many things. A legend. An icon. A star of stage and screen. A small green apple. But who is the real Dame Granny Smith? To help unpeel her career, interviewer David Salter invites the famed fruit to talk about her life and works in front of an audience in An Evening with Dame Granny Smith.

Of course, being an apple, the grand dame does require a little assistance in the whole “moving around and speaking” department. This assistance is provided in the form of puppeteering and excellent ventriloquism from Salter, who provides her with the unmistakable clipped RP accent and cigarette rasp of a true national treasure. The dame herself is showing her age perhaps, with hollowed out eyes and a mouth-flap held on by sticky tape, but she’s lost none of her sparkle and is keen to recount her starring role in Sleeping Beauty or her somewhat dated views on kiwis (the fruits, not New Zealanders).

It’s obviously a ridiculous premise but the show balances its nonsense and apple puns with some lovely bits of business from Slater who plays himself up as a loveable, if slightly out-of-his-depth interviewer fielding questions and being steamrollered by the forceful personality of the apple in his hand. In the traditions of the best puppetry, it’s easy to believe that the slightly mangled fruit is actually a person, despite how silly it is. Slater’s ventriloquism is top notch, but is more an aid to the show than the (apple)core of it.

While the show could probably have got by with just silliness and a bushelful of apple puns, it actually contains a good bit of depth with some twists and turns that leave the audience wondering what is really going on and coming to a surprisingly emotional and poignant ending, though the inherent comedy of the situation is never fully lost.

It’s good by any metric, my only criticism of the show might be that the image of the mouldy dead-eyed apple which is used on all the posters and press is oddly grim and gothic and I would have thought might have put off some of the target audience who would have assumed it’s much less joyful than it is.

A golden delicious delight of a show which like all the best apples is sweet and sharp and fresh.

*****

14:50 (a hour)

5th-31st (not 18th)

The Wee Coo at Underbelly, George Square