After sampling a review pack sent by the distributor, I bought a second punnet off the shelf at Tesco in Edinburgh to see if the retail product held up. The experience was identical, delivering a distinctly firm texture and genuine flavour depth that sets them apart from ordinary table fruit.

Testing the Flavour Profile

Most standard table grapes are little more than chilled spheres of sugar water. Whether the outer skin is pale green, dusty red, or black, biting into one usually reveals the same pale, translucent pulp with very little character.

Boombites behave differently because their pigmentation runs straight through from skin to pip-free core. The flesh is dark crimson, mimicking a pitted cherry rather than a standard grape.

When you bite into one, you get a clean snap with no woolliness or mealiness. The mouthfeel is notably firm, and the juice yields a concentrated berry splash with a faint, savoury depth reminiscent of an uncomplicated red wine. They completely avoid the cloying, artificial sweetness of novelty varieties like Cotton Candy grapes. If you often find supermarket fruit pots (my usual go-to) dull or uninspiring during a quick desk lunch, these offer an immediate, noticeable upgrade.

The Reality Behind the Superfood Hype

The barrage of press coverage around Boombites leans heavily on laboratory metrics. The pitch notes that crossing seedless table grapes with heritage red-fleshed wine grapes creates a fruit boasting six times the anthocyanins of typical black grapes, along with higher resveratrol levels.

It is easy to get swept up in promotional claims regarding heart health, diabetes risk, and cholesterol management. However, nutrition is rarely about a single miracle ingredient. Guidance from trusted bodies like the NHS remains clear: long-term cardiovascular health comes from a varied, balanced diet full of colourful plants, not an isolated superfood.

Boombites easily count towards your daily five-a-day, and picking them over a heavily processed snack is obviously sensible. Treat the medical jargon as a secondary bonus, not a prescription. The real reason to buy them is that they taste good.

Retail Pricing and Value for Money

A 300g punnet of Boombites retails around £3.00 to £3.20. Standard supermarket seedless grapes usually hover around £2.00 for a larger 500g pack, putting Boombites at a clear premium per kilo.

That price point means they probably will not replace the weekly staple punnet for a busy family household. At roughly £3, however, they sit comfortably below luxury dessert fruits. They work well as a midweek treat to break up an office lunch routine, or as a colourful addition to an evening cheese board.

If you want to track them down in Edinburgh, physical availability is currently centred around larger Tesco stores, alongside seasonal listings at Marks & Spencer and Ocado online. If you appreciate firm fruit with genuine flavour and do not mind paying a modest premium, they comfortably live up to the hype.

Disclaimer: I bought one box of Boombites and was given another for free to review. Bubbles and grapes photo by Ferdiansyah on Unsplash

It is a proper neighbourhood local that fills up quickly on a Friday night with a sociable crowd. Owned and operated by Midlothian outfit Cross Borders Brewing, Coal Yard Tap is the newest addition to their Edinburgh taproom stable, joining the Portobello Tap on Portobello High Street and the Old Eastway Tap on Easter Road. Outdoor pavement tables and chairs line the front along Trafalgar Street, offering compact seating for warmer days. Inside, the space is thoroughly dog-friendly. Having visited half a dozen times now, there has been more than one well-behaved dog soaking up the atmosphere on every single trip.

Beer Lines and Knowledgeable Bar Chat

Cross Borders beers naturally take pride of place across the taps, but the brewery avoids running a closed shop. Alongside core pints like Braw and Wee Braw, the draught taps feature guest independent breweries, including Leith neighbours Moonwake Beer Co, rotating Scottish cask ales, and everyday lager. The back bar also carries a considered collection of whiskies and simple cocktails for non-beer drinkers.

The staff know their craft and care about what they pour. Listening to the team talk over the bar about independent IPAs, Scottish microbreweries, and cask selections gives immediate reassurance that you are dealing with folk who love good drink. Service is prompt, attentive, and unfussy, keeping table turnaround smooth even during peak Friday evening rushes.

Artisan Pizzas and the Food Menu

While the Portobello Tap focuses on smash burgers, Coal Yard Tap makes stonebaked 12-inch artisan pizzas its culinary speciality. Value is front and centre with their £15 pizza and pint deal, which pairs any full pizza with selected pints such as Cross Borders Wee Braw, session cask, or Tennent’s. It stands out as one of the best casual dining bargains along this stretch of North Edinburgh.

The kitchen handles both traditional and adventurous toppings with confidence. Options cover a classic margherita at £12 and garlic mushroom at £13.50, alongside inventive combinations like the lemon and pepper ricotta pizza at £14, which balances capers, red onion, and balsamic glaze across a white mozzarella base. The menu highlight is the nduja, hot honey, and ricotta pizza (£14.50), pairing rich, spicy sausage with soothing cheese and sweet heat. For anyone skipping dough, the Not Pizza section includes a burrata salad with freshly baked dough strips for £10, a single antipasti board for £11.50, garlic pizza bread for £8.50, and a trio of pickles for £7.

Things to do in Leith

The western end of Ferry Road places you within easy reach of Leith and Newhaven. A short stroll south along North Junction Street leads to the scenic Water of Leith Walkway and the bustling bars of the Shore. Community theatre and live performances regularly take over the historic Leith Theatre on Ferry Road, while maritime history sits nearby at Ocean Terminal with the Royal Yacht Britannia. Victoria Park is just a brief walk away, making the taproom an ideal refreshment stop after an afternoon walk.

Public transport links are direct, with Lothian Buses routes 7, 14, and 21 dropping passengers right on Ferry Road, while the Edinburgh Tram line terminus at Newhaven is a fifteen-minute walk down the hill. Visitors arriving from elsewhere in the UK can take direct rail connections to Edinburgh Waverley via Trainline. Those planning an extended stay near the waterfront can compare local holiday apartments on TripAdvisor or reserve boutique rooms through Booking.com.

Overall

Ferry Road is not always an easy trading strip for Edinburgh hospitality, but Coal Yard Tap gets the formula spot on. It turns a formerly troubled spot into an unpretentious, welcoming, and dog-friendly craft beer hub with unbeatable pizza value. It gives this stretch of Ferry Road the high-quality neighbourhood pub it genuinely needed.

Steffen Haanes was in high demand at his free show, The Master, in Banshee Labyrinth. The placeholders for his show were snatched up quickly before the show started. For those who like absurd/silly humour with a spooky theme, this is a fantastic show!

The room was packed and an excited buzz could be felt in the air. The giddy anticipation of the spooky things about to begin was palpable.

His co-star was a spooky doll, possessed by Maria Ansdell. She does a good job a getting the crowd warmed up at the start of the show, and she puts on a great performance.

Spooky Shenanigans

Maria Ansdell gets the crowd interaction and the laughs started before the man himself makes his very spooky entrance. This entrance is not a quick one. This made it all the funnier in the absurdity of a man dressed as a vampire storming up and down the aisle was his cape dramatically flowing.

There is something really funny about Steffen’s delivery that doesn’t get old through the show nor on a second viewing.

He kept telling us how spooky his entrance would be and how well he makes absurdity work is a talent. The full room was thoroughly entertained with his eventual entrance.

Crowd Work Chuckles

Steffen consistently worked with the crowd through the show and he has a knack for spotting who will be good to work with and kept going back to them.

So if you’re the type to clam up when called upon, he won’t keep coming back. It’s a discernment that serves the show very well.

Playful Props

The props in this show are simple but used very well. To provide such hilarity from such simple props is a testament to the comedic abilities of Steffen and Maria.

This is a brilliant show that will get a good laugh from those who enjoy superbly silly and spooky shenanigans!

The Gemini is a solo show about a thirty-something identity crisis and the struggle of being pulled between two incompatible desires: craving chaos and desperately needing routine. 

The performer tells the story through spoken-word monologue, enriched with beautifully written poetry, irony and a lot of playfulness and rhythm. Songs occasionally interrupt the narrative too, with moments that almost turn into a sing-along before being swallowed back into the story. 

The whole thing has a choppy, multimedia structure, moving forward in the timeline and between different narrative levels. It feels appropriately restless for a story about someone who can’t quite decide whether stability is the thing she is searching for or the thing she needs to escape from. 

Chasing chaos 

The story begins with the end of a relationship. She dumps a boyfriend who is, by all reasonable measures, great on paper, and sets off in pursuit of novelty and excitement. Maybe if she can collect enough adventures, questionable decisions and unconventional relationships, she will eventually emerge as the sophisticated, independent and fully emancipated adult she imagines herself becoming. 

We follow her through millennial misadventures, polyamory experiments, sex parties with queues, cat fostering, and various attempts to tame the monster of loneliness without accidentally killing excitement in the process. 

None of these experiences exactly provides the satisfying answer she is looking for, but collectively they help her learn a thing or two about what she actually needs. 

Dubbing herself 

One of my favourite devices in the show was the way recorded audio was used to stage conversations. During these exchanges, the performer plays recordings of both her own lines and other people’s dialogue, then acts them out on stage almost as if she is being dubbed. This simple but ingenious device makes a solo performance suddenly feel populated. 

The recordings also allow her to play with the fourth wall. At times, the audio establishes a more objective version of what is supposedly happening in the scene, while she then turns directly to the audience and adds another layer of her internal commentary, in a Fleabag style. 

Burlesque energy

The performer herself has a dark witty charm and charismatic stage presence. There was something about her that kept reminding me of Betty Boop, in the combination of bubbly, expressive physicality and the way she bounces from one adventure to another, gets temporarily trapped inside it and then wriggles herself free again. 

There was also a strong burlesque energy to the whole thing, mixed with a slightly noir-ish darkness that made her an especially entertaining character to follow through this sequence of very neuro-spicy millennial disasters. The form feels like an extension of the character. 

A polished work in progress 

I was surprised to discover how recently the show had been created. The performer mentioned that she had written it in June, memorised it in July and started performing it in August, refining it with every show. By the time I saw it, during the final week of the run, it was so polished that I forgot it was still labelled as a work in progress. 

I found the show incredibly relatable, and the performer’s magnetic, charming presence made it my favourite show of this year’s Fringe. 

Anatomy of Survival is an eclectic multimedia performance that merges theatre, dance, live music, singing and video into an exploration of nervous system dysregulation. The visual identity immediately caught my attention: a gentle pastel palette constantly clashing with (and somehow complementing) the intensity of live drums. 

The stage is minimal but very deliberate: pastel pink chairs, piles of pink takeaway coffee cups scattered around the space, and performers dressed like surreal baristas in beige shorts, pastel uniforms and long pink socks. 

Unexpectedly, the show opens with a short explainer video introducing the basic concepts of nervous system regulation and chronic dysregulation before the beginning of the story. 

One coffee, twenty interpretations 

At the centre of the story is a seemingly ordinary altercation between a customer and a barista over a coffee. Rather than showing us what happened and moving on, the performance pulls the incident apart and reconstructs it through the eyes of everyone involved, including every eye witness. 

The same event is filtered and narrated through all sorts of nervous systems and their reactions. Eventually, we follow the woman who lost control during the altercation and unravel the experience of her spiral. 

The alternation of percussion and bubbly singing somehow captures both the absolute chaos of having a nervous system and the strange irony of occasionally being self-aware enough to watch yourself having one. 

The bear is still there 

At one surreal point, a performer appears wearing a bear head. Once upon a time, our bodies were built to respond very quickly to immediate physical threats, the proverbial bear appearing in front of us. Except now we live in a world where emails, arguments, embarrassment, memories, relationships and condescending baristas can press some of those same ancient alarm buttons. The bear has changed. The circuitry hasn’t caught up yet. 

In that sense, the show becomes an exploration of trauma response as much as nervous system states. When someone is already carrying a heavy load, self-regulation can become incredibly difficult, and relatively small triggers can send them spiralling further into a state they no longer seem capable of controlling and end up on a rollercoaster of fight, flight and freeze.

Playing with somatic activation 

Dance and sound merge in the somatic language of the show. Performers make the internal state physical, representing what the technical terms of the theory at the start of the show can’t fully describe: tension, repetition, impulsive movement, collapse and frantic energy give the audience the ability to feel the different states. 

The show was sprinkled with lovely little reminders that the audience had nervous systems too. A sudden crash of the drums made everyone jump in their chairs, a practical demonstration of how quickly the fight/freeze/flight response can be summoned. 

One of the witnesses introduced us to his special “soft eyes”: a magically hypnotic, prolonged eye contact with everyone in the room, one by one, while the drummer gently caressed the cymbal. 

Looking into the pit 

Anatomy of Survival doesn’t offer a solution or a full back story of the trauma that made the woman reactive, that would tempt us to intellectualize the experience. 

Music, movement and poetic language had a cathartic quality of their own and turned the episode into a contemporary Odyssey through the activation spiral, and dignified it by acknowledging every aspect. It inspires a little more kindness towards people, including ourselves, when our ancient internal machinery seems inadequate at times. 

House of Life is a masterclass on happiness lead by the effervescent Rave-rand and his trusty sidekick Trev. The lessons are told through a variety of sermon and song, and a bit of dance for good measure.

Join the Rave-olution 

While we were waiting in the queue to enter, the Rave-rand, dressed in spectacular robes, went down the queue painting glitter on all of our faces. This really set a precedent on how this show was going to go.

We entered and took our seats, and the Rave-rand threw egg shaped maracas at various audience members. These little shake-y eggs became an important part of the show as the Rave-rand took us through the steps to being happy. 

The show itself began with the Rave-rand ‘magically’ appearing in different places in the venue as the lights went out and came back on. I put ‘magically’ in inverted commas, since we could all hear the pitter patter of his footsteps while the lights were out. I found this to be a very humorous way to start the show, and it definitely made us all relax a little before we got into the nitty gritty!

Eight simple steps 

The first step to happiness is to ‘arrive’, which we had all achieved simply by attending the show. Nailed it! Next up was ‘rebirth’, where we shut our eyes and imagined floating around in goo. As we were reborn, the egg theme became apparent, but I shan’t spoil it for you.

Step three was ‘self esteem’, and the Rave-rand explained that while self esteem does come from the self, it can also come from other people. He went around the audience asking people what they love about the people they’d come with. Everyone’s answers were so wholesome and sweet, it made me feel a little emotional. The Rave-rand, with the help of Trev and his loop pedals, turned these lovely words into a song which had the whole audience singing along by the end.

We moved on to step four, where the Rave-rand asked us to visualise the future we want for ourselves. This lead to more crowd work and audience engagement, where the audience members told the Rave-rand who they are, what they do, and where they want to be in the future. The answers given were very moving, and ranged from having a large family to simply being able to exist in the world as they are. Another upbeat song began, this time with the lyrics being centred around the audiences’ visualisations. This lead to a freestyle rap from the Rave-rand, which was incredibly impressive! 

The Rave-rand then had the whole audience doing a silly dance, as we learnt step five – awareness of our bodies. I haven’t been to many shows where the performers had such a grasp over the audience that we were all perfectly happy doing a ridiculous dance together.

Step six is to purge, as in to purge our negative emotions. Yet more audience interaction where we told the Rave-rand what made us angry. The answers varied from little things like slow walkers, to deeper topics such as injustice and all the -ism’s. We sung about what made us mad together, this time to angrier music than we’d previously heard. 

Next we spent some time simply screaming into the void with a soundtrack in the background. This was step 7 – release. Personally I found this part incredibly cathartic. There’s something beautiful about a room full of strangers screaming together.

The show ended with us ascending, which was the final step in the guide on how to be happy. 

Style and substance

While the show was indeed very wholesome and positive, it was also very funny and the musicality of both the Rave-rand and Trev was awesome. I liked that the eight steps to happiness was inspired by the Buddhist philosophy of the eight-fold path. The performers used tactics that priests use in churches, making this whole thing feel like a spiritual experience, but without any need for a belief in a higher power. 

Overall, this is my favourite show of the Fringe this year. I left with a spring in my step, and will definitely be 100% not sad ever after this show!

Inspired by Tokyo’s traditional kissaten listening bars, where high-fidelity audio takes precedence over rowdy pub noise, the series focuses on intentional, seated listening. High-end turntable manufacturer Technics supplies the venue sound system for both dates. Guests can attend free of charge, with table reservations now open and prize draws planned each night for Technics gear and complimentary highballs.

Kissaten Soundscapes on Princes Street

The series opens on Wednesday 9th September with London broadcaster and artist Anu at the decks. Known for her genre-hopping residencies on NTS Radio and work with Rhythm Section, Anu blends club rhythms with rare Japanese electronic music. The second session takes place on Wednesday 23rd September with DJ Scott Pelloux, director of East London Japanese vinyl specialist VDS London. Pelloux works closely with Tokyo shop Vinyl Delivery Service, bringing crates of rare, unstreamed Japanese pressings directly to Edinburgh tables.

Set inside The Caledonian at the junction of Princes Street and Lothian Road, the bar trades standard pub chatter for focused sound. You can hear every snare crack and needle drop. It is a welcome counterweight to the usual mid-week drinking circuit: intimate, sharp, and audiophile-grade.

Things to do in the West End

If you plan to make an evening of it around the West End, several distinct neighbourhood stops fit the aesthetic of a vinyl and whisky night:

• Dinner: Pair Japanese drinks with dinner nearby at Yamato on Bennets Mount, known for authentic robata skewers and sashimi. Alternatively, grab casual noodles at Maki & Ramen on West Richmond Street or order via Deliveroo UK straight to your room if you are checking in late.
• Vinyl and Shopping: Crate-diggers can head up towards Old Town to browse local record shop Underground Solution on Cockburn Street, or pre-order hard-to-find Japanese pressings through Rough Trade.
• Cinema: Catch an independent screening before the music starts at the nearby Filmhouse redevelopment site or take the tram east to Everyman Cinema at the St James Quarter.
• Transport: The Caley Bar sits a seven-minute walk from Haymarket railway station. You can plan regional trains through TheTrainLine. For travel further across Scotland, car rentals are available via Enterprise Rent-A-Car UK on nearby Russell Road.
• Accommodation: Guests staying overnight can sleep upstairs at the historic station hotel or book neighbouring city rooms through Booking.com. For visitors travelling from overseas, AllClear Travel Insurance UK covers specialist travel policies.

For your Radar

Toki-O Nights offers a rare chance to experience Tokyo’s kissaten listening culture right on Princes Street without buying a plane ticket. With top-spec Technics audio and dedicated sets from Anu and Scott Pelloux, it is easily one of the most sophisticated mid-week music bookings in Edinburgh this autumn.

Find out more about the venue through The Caley Bar and view details on the Toki-O Nights programme. Follow artist updates on Instagram for Anu and VDS London.

Admission is free, but tables are expected to fill quickly. You can reserve your spot via OpenTable Booking.

“David Alnwick: Magician. Definitely Not Creepy” one poster told me the truth in a misleading manner.

I went to see David Alnwick‘s above-mentioned show on the implicit promise of a creepy magic show, something so overt that it had to issue a statement in advance. Magic can be very creepy, so I never doubted this, and I’m all here for shows that lean into the creep factor of magic. In a labyrinth as well? Yes please!

Unfortunately for me, despite his show being fun, magical, humorous and creative, it was exactly as stated: definitely not creepy.

He ended the show by telling us that he feels magic acts have largely become comedy routines, not creepy at all, and popular enough that even he is doing one such right now. He prefers towards older magic, from the times when it was feared, loaded with history and mystery.

It was hidden, and dangerous. Why don’t we come to his next show, the Haunted Magician, which definitely is creepy.

Definitely creepy

I was snuggled away in a speakeasy, hidden away behind polite company, with a projector pointing at the wall. A brief introductory story played out, a phone call between him and his mentor, discussing an ancient book full of summoning rituals adapted as a magic act. The mentor warned that ghosts don’t see the difference between summons and theatre, and would regardless answer his summons.

The phonecall ends and Alnwick runs onto stage sporting photocopies of a special new magic book he acquired, promising a fantastic new act. The projection screen showed us various closeup snips of the book, a handful of sigils and spells and photographs.

HE’S LYING TO YOU! flashes on the screen for a moment, but we’re advised to ignore this, and focus on the magic.

He walks us through three segments of his performance. Themed around the supernatural, he had prepared tricks and magic involving ancient runes, reading spirits and seances, and finally a promise to return the dead to life, to communicate with ghosts.

These spells were slung flawlessly, even more impossible than what I had seen before. His boisterous chat and banter weren’t dampened at all by his somewhat more serious tone. YOU’RE IN DANGER! flashes up on the screen, but we’re again advised to pay it no mind.

DON’T BELIEVE HIM

Alnwick treads a fine line between keeping the atmosphere creepy and foreboding, while interjecting it with enough targeted snips of humour. A false sense of security to keep us completely unprepared for a handful of actual jump scares!

His magic included mentalist mind reading, card tricks, and prophecies and predictions. Everything was layered in occult themes, such as asking the audience to quietly pick out any sigil from a list displayed on the projector, and then asking us to count up and down and change our answer. He then went through each sigil one by one, explaining in brief their ancient meanings, before landing on the final sigiil (with the projector reading “you’re fucked”) which just so happened to be the whole audience arrived at.

The tricks became more mystical in nature and increasingly elaborate. He involved more and more people and prompts. He recurrently used pre-recorded scenes on the projector of himself in candlelight, telling us he had a dream and prophecising audience interactions. A cute touch, both solidifying the magic and casting aside doubt, but also building on the developing narrative with humorous tension break.

We would be treated to another phonecall or two (always timed as he ran out of the room to collect a forgotten prop) which would keep the narrative alive, continuing the conversation between him and his mentor, as we gradually see that he is wilfully luring us, the audience, into this ghost story.

Summoning Spirits

I appreciated how none of his tricks felt random and disconnected, but was committed entirely to the developing storyline, the atmosphere, and the meta-narrative. What is normally a bundle of disconnected acts and tricks had suddenly become a single cohesive experience, all tied together in an exciting and unsettling atmosphere.

The final act of his haunted story was a summoning of the dead. He told us how your first death is of your body, and your second death is the last time anyone speaks your name. So surely, by speaking aloud a name of someone long dead and forgotten, we spiritually revive them.

He showed us personally taken photographs of old graves and mixed them all up in a bag, encouraging some audience members to take a photo from the bag. He then performed a few different summoning rituals, using ashes, photography, and a oujia board, to determine which ghost each person had collected.

Between jump scares and phonecall lore, he divined each ghost precisely, welcoming each person to speak out aloud the ghosts name for the first time and bring them back to life, in the room with us.

The final ghost, if not now then soon enough, would be himself: the haunted magician.

But what of us, the audience now haunted by his play? Well for me, this cursed performance will surely live on in my mind. I can remember the impressive magic, enjoy the laughs, squint my eyes at the jump scares that made me hit the roof, and quietly contemplate my own mortality as I await the ghosts to visit me.

I walked into the stage room, a dungeon (dark, LED lit, heavy air sets the mood) and was handed a tarot card. I received the Fool, no surprise, but several different tarots made their way to each audience member. We were there to hear ghost stories and have a tarot reading, or so I’ve been led to believe. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this, but I walked away pleasantly surprised and with my own copy of a beautifully illustrated Fool.

Dark & glittery

Sasha Graham introduced herself from the darkness, setting a mystical mood as she entered the stage. She told us some of her history; American, New York living, spiritualist. She brought a lively energy to the stage, complete with a dark but glittery outfit to set the party mood.

She told us about New York in the 90s. A grungy artistic and dangerous place, full of raw life and promising potential for someone like her, an aspiring actress looking to make it in the big city. This ghost story isn’t just a tale found on the internet, but her own witness account? She never really got into how much of this is her truth and how much is dramatized for the play. Maybe it’s to build the mystery, maybe it’s for the best we don’t know…

She announced The Fool, catching the few of us in the audience who have the tarot card in our hands. Not a reading quite yet though, but the chapter title for her ghost story.

A personal ghost story

She would go on to theatrically play out the story of a couple of years in her early twenties, new to the big apple. She is freshly moving into a bargain loft: huge, messy, with a handful of concerning caveats, but very cheap! Perfect for an aspiring star who wants to express her artistic flair.

She tells her story in first person, from her perspective and in the present tense, bringing us into the past with her. She would briefly act out some other characters, and would take micro intervals for dancing to party music when it came up, and to play out other interstitials. She took ownership of her narrow stage and made each scene feel dynamic and full of life. The lighting would shift and breathe with her, creating colourful shadows in front of and behind her, easing us in and out of the creepier story sections.

And at the end of each chapter of the story, it was time for a reading.

Tarot readings in context

She called upon the Fool first, but also later called up the Devil, Death, the Lovers, and the World. A few people had each card, but she said that everyone holding the card should hear the reading as if it was directed at them; it was no accident each person was met by their card. I am the Fool.

She took the time to explain tarot, what it means, and how it might relate to our current lives. What message we might take from it to go forward, to solve our problems.

I found this particularly interesting, as explanations of tarot cards in my experience have always felt very abstract. Death doesn’t mean actually dying, but uncomfortable changes that need embraced. The Devil is the darkness we’re wilfully blind to, the Fool is one who steps near the cliff without looking, yet never seems to fall. Very fascinating, but also very abstract: what does it really mean?

By attaching each card to a section of the story, I got to see context for these things, played out in relatable story beats. I followed her journey and how she faced her challenges, both natural and ghostly, and then got to hear about the tarot and how that applied to the situation. How it marked that section of her life, and what wisdoms she could have benefitted from during that spooky time.

Surviving ghosts

She finished her ghost story, concluding that she did indeed survive, despite the haunting she encountered. A few tarot readings were given to the audience and she wrapped up by asking us to keep our minds open and embrace these questions and wisdoms. She let us know the cards were ours to keep, and that the full deck of illustrated tarot is available for sale.

The fear factor was gentle, with more attention on the journey and the tarot readings than actual horrors and ghosts. I didn’t walk away particularly shaken or spooked, however the few creepy dips were acted out very well and supported by the lighting/music tech to great effect.

Her storytelling was vivid and captured me with her persona brimming full of energy and life, without ever feeling exhausting or overwhelming. It was paced carefully and even if I was left hungry for more horror, I enjoyed her performance and getting to witness a small part of her life.

With most modern adaptations of Shakespeare, I like to enter into those experiences with curiosity, optimism, and a healthy dose of trepidation after seeing some truly heinous offerings. With Mother, Maiden & Crone, I did not need the last of those at any point in time. This is a rapturously queer story, taking the trappings of Macbeth and spinning them into a biting, funny fever dream that I would be delighted to see again.

Fair is foul/fowl

Set in Limbo (Bar and Kitchen), our effervescent trio of shot boy, drag queen, and DJ prepare for the coming of the fated hen do. Through impressive physical acting and comedic timing down pat, our trio of witches establish quickly and fully both the world and their characters.

Then, from the fated arrival of McBride, jealousies are sparked, plans are put in motion, and things devolve into high-stakes lip syncs and scandalous revelations.

Foul is fair

There is more in Mother, Maiden & Crone than simply queering Macbeth. That in and of itself is, in the right hands, an interesting idea rife with possibility.

But this piece pushes further into laying bare the truths of the uncertainty of existing as visibly queer in a world that can embrace or ostracize those qualities on fickle whims. The deep and global connections often found between queer people and magic and the occult. How people can be guests in queer spaces responsibly, or very much not in the case of the McBridal party here.

Overall

After a long day of possibly too many Fringe shows, Mother, Maiden & Crone was an absolute tonic. It brought delight, laughter, representation in beautiful and unexpected ways, and made me happy to be out seeing it. The writing is smart, the performances are top notch, and it is my strong opinion that this is a show and company definitely to be watched.