Alaska – Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Summerhall

Alaska continues at Summerhall – Former Womens Locker Room, Edinburgh – until 25 August 2019.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

The sun’s low in the sky as we take our places in the circle. Cheryl Martin greets us with warmth – quietly pottering around her dominion, setting up the space for us. Through all the mania of the festival, this is her small island of calm.

Her story, however, is anything but. In the quiet of this Summerhall basement, we learn of a lifelong struggle with mental illness, a decade spent in and out of psychiatric institutions, loves, loss, music, and Alaska – her spiritual home on the Moon.

It’s not always an easy story to hear at close quarters, though that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be heard. It drives through myriad talking points: the insufficiency of our mental health systems, the societal drive to perfection or damnation, the importance of connection and true empathy.

With a piece so unflinchingly woven from the cloth of Martin’s own experience it feels churlish to examine the theatrical efficiency of it – where so many shows seek to control an audience’s experience, there feels something important about simply sitting together and listening, as a speaker shares their life, which shouldn’t be confined only to the therapeutic circle.

However, as performance is her chosen vessel of communication, the piece feels somewhat in limbo, without a strong central structure.

For example, there’s an uncertainty to the framing of the show. Evidently some sections are still in gestation – the opening format in particular comes across as apologetic and uncertain, and the framework collapses under the later weight of the story.

Nonetheless, it’s interesting to note that Martin’s most assured sequences are those drawn from the visceral. When she is engaging the most with her history, everything comes into focus, and the promised imagery truly comes to life.

This is true also of her chosen music – with a voice of effortless hue, Martin comforts us through the darkness with a repertoire mainly consisting of jazz standards (Billie Holiday’s number in particular is entrancing). However, again, the structure of the songs are a little confusing, they feel stuck on to the narrative as opposed to moving it forward.

It’s important this show gets the further development and dramaturgy it needs so that it can discover more of its purpose – this is a voice that deserves representation, and a story that deserves to be understood.

Aura Simon