Hyper at Summerhall – Edinburgh Fringe review

Saoirse and Conall make music together – it’s always been the thing they have in common. But after a shift in Saoirse’s gender identity, the music feels different, unfamiliar – just like the friendship. Now, they have to find the way to grow with new voices and new styles, all while waiting to go on stage together for the first time in a while. 

Within the intimate (perhaps too intimate, arguably), sweat-laden walls of the underground Former Women’s Locker Room at Summerhall, what begins as an intensely exposing, almost frosty play melts into a warm embrace – by the end, we all feel like a unified community in the presence of artists seeking to support one another in new ways.

Writer Ois O’Donoghue, also present (she plays the “immaterial” Saoirse, while Fiona Larmon plays the “tangible” Saoirse, for the bulk of the play), subtly layers on a lot here. A huge part of the piece is the the role of music – the ways in which musicians use modulators to alter or mask their voices – to emulate or exaggerate. It’s a fascinating topic that leaps head-first into the world of hyperpop. 

One deeply experimental moment comes when, after being given a crib sheet, the audience are asked to read out transphobic lines during an altercation in a bathroom. It’s a stirring reminder – just as quickly as a community can support, it can also tear down. Hyper is special success story at this Edinburgh Fringe.