After Party at Traverse Theatre – Edinburgh Fringe review

Curiously, this year’s Fringe features two separate Traverse plays, running in the same auditorium, centred on quirky Scottish matriarchs planning their own deaths. This is the one that suffers by comparison.

In Morna Young’s After Party (conceived alongside Alex Fthenakis), 80-year-old matriarch Vivienne Blackwood (played with bravado by Alison Peebles) gathers her fractured family at a remote, grand country house under the guise of a birthday celebration. What unfolds feels initially like a setup for a Knives Out-style thriller, but quickly pivots into a lengthy exploration of assisted dying, a family at each others’ throats, tedious Shakespeare references, unwanted pregnancies and overbearing faith.

Given the timeliness of current legislative debates around the Assisted Dying Bill, the central theme could not be more urgent. Director Katie Posner works with a large ensemble, including Blackwood’s two dysfunctional children, her ex-husband, her ex-daughter-in-law-turned-new-wife, emotionally repressed grandson and his viral rockstar girlfriend, plus Blackwood’s influencer granddaughter: given all that, it isn’t hard to see how a crowded narrative could end up suffocating the most compelling themes and discussions – about Blackwood’s choices and personal agency in the face of her own mortality.

At over two hours, the production feels unnecessarily bloated and structurally unfocused. Young’s script strays into excessive subplot distraction and caricatured, surface-level characterisations. While the family’s moral stances inevitably shift across the evening, the dense waffle masks the emotional and philosophical heart of a debate that truly has caught a nation’s imagination. A punchier, trimmed-down chamber piece, especially given Peebles’ shimmering central turn, would have cut far deeper. Ultimately, despite a noble premise and a talented creative team, After Party runs out of steam before the cocktails kick in.

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