Sense: A New Musical About Dementia – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Sense – A New Musical About Dementia continues at Big at theSpace Triplex until 22 August 2025.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

This is a little gem of a piece. It’s Christmas Eve and the Smit family gather for their usual celebration, but there’s nothing usual about Christmas this year. Grandpa Albert, gently and sensitively played by Erik Goris, clutches a photo album as he literally clings on to his memories. What unfolds is a touchingly warm portrait of a family navigating their way through change. And not just Albert’s condition. There’s a lot going on here. They subtitle it as a new musical about dementia, but it’s bigger than that. It’s about family – Albert’s dementia is just one loop in the tangled knot that they try to unpick.

The beautiful songs by Femke Verschueren are sung acoustically which suits the gentle nature of the storytelling. The backing track orchestrations by James Burki and Willem Van Dijk are among the best you’ll hear this Fringe. Proper songs with proper melodies.

There is great joy to be had in the flashback scenes where Albert, young and awkwardly scientific, meets Lily, the wonderful Verschueren, a chanteuse who’ll become his wife. “Don’t look at the facts,” she says, “open your heart.” Good advice.

Floris Devooght’s direction is deceptively economical. Grandson Thomas, charmingly played by Daan Keisse, doubles as the young Albert by the simple swapping of a jacket while the older Albert looks on – remembering a “golden hour” in his life.

There is so much to like here. The unexpected shifts in Albert’s decline paired with moments of joy. Sudden lucidity when Albert sees exactly what’s going on in the family and goes straight back into father mode. The family trio singing of how everything can change, ‘Just Like That.’ The ache when Albert has to be told, again, that his wife died 20 years ago.

Jens Goossens has written a tender and thoughtful exploration of how all our lives are affected by this ghastly disease and that we must never forget the person at the centre of it all, no matter how much they seem to have changed.

“If I ever forget, will you remind me that I love you?” Beautiful.

Steven Wren