Philosophy of the World at Summerhall – Edinburgh Fringe review

Ear-splittingly loud, raucous, rambling, thoughtful, clever, provocative and absolutely and utterly brilliant. There is nothing like Philosophy of the World anywhere on the Edinburgh Fringe. Or possibly anywhere.

The all-female In Bed with My Brother made their reputation as an experimental theatre company with shows such as We Are Ian, Tricky Second Album (inspired by KLF’s burning of a million pounds), and Prime_Time (a revenge fantasy about Jeff Bezos).

After a six-year hiatus, their new show Philosophy of the World is based around the story of The Shaggs, a legendarily so-bad-they’re-good US rock band, who made only one album. At first dismissed as a joke, they later achieved cult status, acclaimed as proto punk pioneers, with fans who included Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa.

The hour begins relatively quietly with Nora Alexander, Dora Lynn and Kat Cory sidling onto the stage and promising that in contrast to their previous shows which were messy, chaotic and where they got their tits out, this will be a proper biographical three act play.  They’ve even employed an actor – in the long-suffering shape of Nigel Barrett, as their stage manager.

Then they exit before reappearing in long, shaggy brown wigs as the Wiggin sisters, forced by their dad Austin to fulfil a prophecy made before they were born that he would have three daughters who would become a world-famous rock band. To that end, he forces them to play, rehearsing every day in the family cellar, doing callisthenics to keep fit.

This story is recounted, to a soundtrack of deafening rock, in captions above a white curtain pulled across the stage, to which the women react, before enacting the narrative being told. At one point, Austin is so determined to make them a success that he arranges a weekly concert where the entire town of Freemont is bribed to attend with free cans of Pepsi. The split second of horror as they read the caption: “The audience throw Pepsi cans at them” is joyful. And then the audience, our audience, who have previously happily been playing townsfolk, actually do throw cans. Quite hard.

Other moments are even more disturbing. Barrett, as Austin, throws the drum kit at his daughters. When their father dies, the women turn. They stop being The Shaggs and batter Barrett in repeated scenes of violence. He returns as a ghost and screams: “This isn’t a play, it’s a mess”.

The anarchy explodes and the mood gets darker as the women explore ideas of patriarchy, exploitation and who owns the rights to any story, any life. Tom Cruise has apparently bought up rights to the story of The Shaggs. Alexander begins a long lecture on the theme of control, peeling off pages into the increasingly cluttered stage around her. She talks about the shooting of Andy Warhol by writer Valerie Solanas, another woman whose history was defined by a man who didn’t take her aspirations seriously.

Their tops come off as the questions build. The mayhem continues. We glimpse the real Shaggs, playing with discordant, discombulated fervour. We hear the end of their story. Darkness falls. There’s no curtain call. But huge applause.