After her Grand­ma’s death a woman is tasked with clean­ing out the base­ment of her house. As she sifts through what seems like every single thing her Grandma ever owned she dis­cov­ers a tape record­er. Then she finds a box of tapes – some of which work, and some which don’t. As she listens to the record­ings we are drawn along with her into a mys­ter­i­ous story uncov­er­ing memor­ies and secrets.

This is a devised pro­duc­tion with a story by Stella Reid (also act­ing), Jane Yonge (also dir­ec­tion), Oliv­er Morse (also space) and Thomas Lam­bert (also sound). Joined by Jason Long­staff (light­ing) they’ve cre­ated a spooky little tale which is very sat­is­fy­ing. Reid is a bright and enga­ging per­former. She dances, tries on clothes, talks to her mum on the phone, and is very easy to empath­ise with. There’s a brief encounter with a pizza deliv­ery man but oth­er­wise she’s alone with the dis­em­bod­ied voice of her Grandma. This voice is scratchy, uncer­tain yet power­ful, and it’s made even more so by the way it’s thrown around the space. It echoes and bounces around the audi­ence. The sound is com­pli­men­ted by the light­ing. Lights flick on, ripple through the space, then focus atten­tion on the record­er. The almost uncom­fort­ably warm space added to the atmo­sphere.

An excel­lent start to my Fringe 2017.

 

Plus…

Yay! The Fringe Fest­iv­al is back! Three weeks of shows, exhib­i­tions, exper­i­ences, and pod­casts around Wel­ling­ton city. The Fringe team are camped out at Bond street if you need help pick­ing shows. They recom­mend you go to at least three – “One you know you’ll love, one that’s going to be the “Next Big Thing” and one that you will talk about FOREVER.” I recom­mend pick­ing up a Fringe addict card which gets you a dis­count on tick­ets plus drinks deals at Fringe ven­ues. Happy fest­iv­al!