REVIEW: Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It at Soho Theatre 7 – 26 September

‘sheer performance instinct’ ★★★★ ½

Two teenage girls crash into a stop sign and need an excuse. They saw Bigfoot. It is a terrible excuse, which is exactly why it works. From there, Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It follows the lie as it spreads through a small Appalachian town, picking up new witnesses, new details and an impressive amount of confidence along the way.

Written and performed by Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland, the show is fast, loud and deliberately messy. The pair play almost the entire town between them, switching character with little more than a change in voice, posture or facial expression. It should become confusing. Mostly, it does not.

Rice and Roland are very good physical performers, and much of the comedy comes from how quickly they can turn one body into another. A teenager disappears and a local official arrives. Someone frightened becomes someone furious. A new character can exist for ten seconds and still feel completely clear. The stage itself is sparse, dominated by an enormous STOP sign. It is a good visual joke to begin with and becomes better as the evening goes on. The whole town is being told to ‘stop’ and nobody seems remotely interested.

The pace is relentless. Sometimes brilliantly so. Rice and Roland barely allow a scene to finish before the next one has already started, and the performance has the energy of a story being retold too many times by people who keep interrupting each other. Occasionally, however, the speed gets in the way. There are moments when a joke lands and is immediately buried under three more. Some of the townspeople also remain closer to comic sketches than fully realised characters. That matters because the show becomes more interesting once it moves beyond laughing at people who believe in Bigfoot.

While everyone is busy worrying about something in the woods, there are many more ordinary problems around them. The water is unsafe. Public services are failing. Those in power are not exactly rushing to take responsibility. Bigfoot, suddenly, is useful.

The production is not especially subtle about this, but subtlety is probably not what it is after. The joke is that a ridiculous story can become more urgent than something real simply because it is easier to repeat. And people do repeat it. Again and again. By the time the story has passed through enough mouths, nobody seems to need evidence anymore. The repetition is enough. There is something very recognisable in that, and the show is strongest when it leaves the audience to notice the connection rather than underlining it.

Rice and Roland hold the whole thing together through sheer performance instinct. Their timing with each other is excellent, particularly in the moments where scenes almost fall apart but never quite do. There is a looseness to the delivery, but underneath it the structure is extremely controlled.

At 65 minutes, the piece does not outstay its welcome. If anything, it occasionally moves so quickly that some of its better ideas could use another minute in the room. Still, it is hard not to enjoy a show this committed to its own stupidity. A Bigfoot sighting becomes gossip, then panic, then political convenience. The monster is imaginary. The distraction is not.

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It
Soho Theatre, 7 – 26 September 2026
Written and performed by Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland
Co-directed by Xhloe Rice, Natasha Roland and Tom Costello

BOX OFFICE https://sohotheatre.com/events/bigfoot-ripped-my-dog-in-half-i-saw-it/