A Little Inquest Into What We’re Doing Here at Zoo Southside – Edinburgh Fringe review

In 2022, Josie Dale-Jones’ life was completely upended. She, and her family, received death threats. One of the venues she’d been programmed at was warned of a bombing. She had to change her company address. Her funders were spooked. All because of a show that no one had seen, that wasn’t even finished.

A Little Inquest Into What We’re Doing Here is based on the very real story of how Dale-Jones’ unstaged piece, The Family Sex Show, was the object of a major scandal. Originally set to bring fresh approaches to sex education, including consent, sexuality and puberty, the show was accused of being indecent and lewd, with frustrations perpetuated by misinterpretations and misrepresentations around what was set to feature in the production.

In a way, A Little Inquest… feels like Dale-Jones’ attempt to reclaim her own stage space – to reassert herself as a creative even after institutions and collaborators shied away. It also operates as a eulogy for a production lost – smothered by misinformation and online fury.

In one passage, she lists all her regrets, things she’d have done differently if given her time again: altering the show’s title, its description, its press statements. Optics could have side-stepped an entire fiasco. It’s laced with sadness, almost a warning shot for those who forget how easily certain aspects of the media can turn on and vilify those making fringe work in the UK.

The Family Sex Show ruckus also paints a more unnerving picture of artists in this country – jettisoned by funders and institutions at the mere whisper of controversy. Dale-Jones even suggests that her Arts Council funding was dropped after quiet words were exchanged with those in Westminster.

A fascinating first half, with Dale-Jones sat at a darkened lectern, gives way to a more experimental and slightly less successful second. But the melancholy that sits underneath the show is hard to forget – an artist spurned by so many in the very world she’s dedicated her life, and craft, to helping.