It is the story of the Edinburgh Fringe so far. On August 3, actor Georgie Grier performed her one-woman play Sunsets to an audience of just one person, then tweeted a tearful selfie explaining as much afterwards. It went viral – over 2000 retweets and counting – and Grier garnered support from famous names like Dara O’Briain, Jason Manford, Sarah Millican, and Ben Stiller. Suddenly, she is playing to packed houses.
Is her show actually any good, though? Yes, it is. It is not brilliant, but it certainly deserves a decent crowd for the rest of the festival.
Partly, Sunsets succeeds thanks to its cracking concept. It casts its audience as attendees at a live podcast recording. Grier plays Denver, the podcast’s host. The podcast itself is a six-part series documenting Denver’s real-life attempt to live her life like a rom-com movie. We are present as she records her sixth and final episode. Will she finally find her happy ending?
Grier has fun with this idea – there are amusing riffs on Notting Hill, When Harry Met Sally, The Wedding Planner and other films, and the podcast comes complete with irritating adds for dog food every five minutes – but she also uses it to intelligently interrogate the various ways in which a relentless diet of rom-com has warped the way we live our lives. It is a powerful point to make in a world obsessed with Instagram idealism and social media success. Grier’s Denver is trying to fit her imperfect life into a perfect mould and, gradually, we see her suffer as a result.
And partly, Sunsets is a success due to Grier’s fine performance. Looking uncannily like a young Keira Knightley, she is annoyingly exuberant at first – like a lot of podcast hosts – but slowly reveals the pain beneath Denver’s polished smile as the show progresses.
Not everything works, though. The humour is weak and the laughs few and far between, despite Grier’s best efforts, and the show’s twisty finale feels forced, unnecessary and melodramatic.
There has, it should be noted, been a bit of a backlash to Grier’s viral success on social media, with whispers of it being a planned marketing stunt circulating the festival. That seems both unfair and unlikely – but even if it is true, who cares? Like a lot of performers at the Fringe, she has poured her heart and soul into her show, and deserves all the audience she can get.
Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, August 10-13; also 15-27; edfringe.com
