theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall
Aug 13-17
20:45
The Edinburgh Fringe is a beacon for all that’s wonderful in the world of the arts. Some enjoy Korean stick dancing, some New Zealand comedians, some, well, etc., etc, etc.. For myself, in 2024, I’m feeling a strange pull towards Off Broadway solo shows, (perhaps there’s one of them in me myself), the second of which I saw, to my delight, last night.
Living on a quiet Scottish island, far from the pleasure dome of New York City, I knew nothing about Brett Epstein, his American TV work & his critical successes in the NY theatre scene, such as the smash Rule of 7×7. But, within about 4 minutes of his excellent introspective retrospective – directed by Brooklyn Bottling Company’s Tom Costello -, I was brought rapidly up to speed with how brilliant he actually was & how that every rejection – both romantic & career-wise – was positively, definitely, NOT his fault.
Everyone connects with me, I’m a cream off the top, top-tier human
Look… Brett is great; a proper jitter-jive-ball of endless, infectious energy, who thumps a hole in your solar plexus, grabs your spine, & wiggles it about a bit until you start laughing out loud. His show, ‘Alone on Stage,’ is generally about being told to do a solo show by Tom Costello, then actually creating it. He chucks in occasional classic solo show ingredients – reading out a madcap conversation on Hinge he’d had with Mull’d Wine Mikey, for example, & flicking thro’ a series of cards containing themes such as ‘six weeks vegan’ for him to riff off. But, overall, I rather got the feeling that it was the sense of achievement that Brett HAD pulled off a show, despite all his neurosi, & that it WAS, thankfully, proper funny.
As a gemini, everything I say is half joke, half cry for help
To experience Brett’s vaudevillian staccato in full flow is to witness the personification of a vernal superego, trying on its best new clothes & strutting about the shop feeling totally fabulous. We in the audience are caress’d into sharing the comfort & ease which Brett finds on stage & in performance, but of course we are sporadically reminded that he is the only one allow’d to perform, for he is indeed, Alone on Stage.’
Tech person, can you make the lights more intimate please – thank you gorge!
There is a certain sense of being hypnotis’d when watching Brett – he is a real treasure of a guy doing a shining diamond of a show. You cannot help but feel happy throughout the three quarter of an hour’s worth of Brett Epstein in his peculiar, purposeful, penetrating pomp.
Damo
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