Or What’s Left of Us at Summerhall – Edinburgh Fringe review

Who knew folk music was so swaddled in death?

Fringe pioneers Sh!t Theatre certainly did, as it turns out, as they bring a unique and deeply affecting show to Summerhall, a regular Edinburgh haunt for the award-winning group. “This isn’t a theatre show”, they explain from the outset, “it’s a sing-around.” Which is reportedly different to a sing-along.

Figures like Jane Delawney and John Barleycorn appear like conjured spirits as the two company members – Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit – tread that fine line between irreverence and personal confessional – in a tale grounded in real events that have happened to the pair in the last year or so.

Anecdotes about taking mushrooms at a folk festival, dressing dogs as Pamela Anderson and a folk pub being burnt down under mysterious circumstances get a nod. Questions about death abound: are you the same if you’ve lost something that you held as part of yourself?

The duo present the show almost like a musical revue, introducing numbers, peeling away context as they peel away their own experiences of loss. They revel in the perfection of imperfection, the way cracked crockery can be stuck back together with golden glue.

Like a lot of Sh!t Theatre shows, its subtle power only came to me later – walking across the Edinburgh meadows, remembering the joys and songs shared with those loved ones long gone.

After the show, audience members are invited into an adjacent space to sing together: a chance to find solace in the company of others, singing out of tune but, more importantly, as one. Ceremonial without giving a toss to sincerity, this is something special.