Main Character Energy at Summerhall – Edinburgh Fringe review

Temi Wilkey wants us to look at her. We can’t blink. She wants us to be transfixed. This is her story, her space and her moment – and she’s going to make the most of it.

In the anarchic and boisterous Roundabout space, award-winning performer and writer Wilkey gives us a run-down of her life – her dismay when she lost the chance to star in her year six play, her experiences working with (and then failing an audition for) the RSC, and having her diary read by her mother, without permission. Emotions are dialled up to 11 – this is storytelling told with excess.

It’s fantastic content – hurried through with a freewheeling trajectory that blasts through Wilkey’s life: it’s subversive, trope-deconstructing and, naturally, at times very funny. If anything, the sheer mayhem on offer here blunts some of Wilkey’s more poignant, powerful moments: an extended passage sees her reflect on the racist abuse faced by recent West End Juliet Francesca Amewudah-Rivers. Is this the industry, that she’s dreamed of since childhood, really one she wants to succeed in?

A late-night, oversaturated boisterousness thunders through the hour-long piece, directed slickly by Ragevan Vasan. Wilkey builds an easy rapport with her audiences (and has some amusing interactions with the tech desk). A brilliant use of Anastacia’s “Left Outside Alone” also works marvellously.