Alex Franklin: I Must Reach The Summit Please God I Must Reach The Summit – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Alex Franklin: I Must Reach The Summit Please God I Must Reach The Summit continues at the Underbelly, Cowgate – Delhi Belly until 27 August 2023.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

I missed the first couple of minutes due to a mix-up at the box office but was presented with Alex Franklin, a being of indeterminate gender, garbed like a cross between slim-legged model, a fledgling from the corps de ballet of Swan Lake, and a toddler in a particularly frilly nappy. The analogies are apt: being trans is one of the leitmotifs of the show (but not hammered home). There is an engaging childlike playfulness about Franklin’s restless energy – by turns wheedling, cajoling, desperate to please the audience at one moment, then gratuitously dismissive of them when they don’t get it.

At the beginning, they firmly state their goal, the “summit” of the title. They want the audience to literally die of laughter and when it doesn’t, they’re almost bemused and zap through a number of scenarios with surrealistic abandon in pursuit of their ambition: the father-son relationship, the body language of bees (with simultaneous translation on a screen), a cowboy scenario, the repeated appearance of a gun-toting mouse, and many more, all punctuated by a handful of self-penned songs, some to backing tracks, some accompanying himself on keyboards (Tim Minchin briefly came to mind and as quickly disappeared. Franklin is their own person).

They have a marvellous singing voice. I suspected perfect pitch but on having that thought, they announced that they had had singing lessons (are they telepathic?). By the end, one is whisked along with the curious feeling of not quite knowing where one has been… Absurdist, chaotic (but not that chaotic no matter how mad they say the show is).

James Bryce