Edinburgh Fringe cabaret and variety reviews: Apocalypse Cabaret: Songs for the End of the World | Dangerous Goods | Arthur Hull’s Flop: The Best Songs From The Worst Musicals Ever Written

CABARET AND VARIETY

Apocalypse Cabaret: Songs for the End of the World ★★★★

Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 24 August

What better way to end the night, or the world, this Fringe, than with Scout Durwood in Apocalypse Cabaret – a first-rate one-woman karaoke-confessional exploring her family history, and personal experience, of depression. It starts with laughter as Durwood shimmers stage-wards, flaunting a spangled shawl, a tell-tale bottle of Malbec, and a brown paper bag. “If you’re not drinking, you’re a loser,” she drawls. “We all know it’s only a problem if you drink alone.”

Sequences of movement punctuate song-stories and puppetry. “Is this too phallic?” she quips, commencing a compromising duet with the microphone stand, before initiating an encounter with the front row in close quarters. As can be expected of an after-hours cabaret, audience interaction abounds. Each iteration will be as unique as the audience that attends, especially since the audience also plays a vital role as Durwood’s imaginary friends.

“Am I dead?” she asks, then. Not dead, just unconscious, as it happens – stuck in some interstitial space between avoiding her feelings and a first-person apocalypse. The brown paper bag assumes googly eyes and an Australian accent, schooling Durwood in the therapeutic potential and community-building aspects of singing karaoke, specifically Journey's Don't Stop Believin'.

We learn of Arnold, the stuffed toy that represented safety for her as a child, the road to recognising her own sexuality, and the ways in which Durwood and her mother mitigate their discomfort around communicating feelings of closeness. Durwood ricochets from R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), to Love Story by Taylor Swift, and finally, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet provides a surprising note of hope, as when “a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life” (their singular life, she reminds us) their epic capacity for love ultimately becomes the anthem for her own.

JOSEPHINE BALFOUR-OATTS

READ MORE: The Best Edinburgh Fringe Theatre 2025: Every show with a four or five star review from The Scotsman so far

CABARET AND VARIETY

Dangerous Goods ★★★

Assembly George Square Gardens (Venue 23) until 24 August

This high voltage cabaret from Australian intersectional company Polytoxic unites two acclaimed festival artists: Lisa Fa’alafi, who created the hit Hot Brown Honey, and Leah Shelton, who won a Fringe First Award for her solo show Batshit at the Traverse Theatre last year.

Over 70 minutes, it features a series of acts from its seven-strong cast, each of which rejects or subverts a misogynist, patriarchal, or colonial trope of some sort.

Bridie Hooper reacts to an unwanted catcall with a stylish straps routine. Mayu Muto performs a twisted version of Red Riding Hood on the rope. Fa’alafi performs a cowboy-themed dance, then whips the head off a barbie doll. Best of all, Jazida performs an eyebrow-singing fire-eating routine, gulping down balls of flame like marshmallows.

Some of the acts underwhelm, there is quite a lot of lip-syncing, and the socio-political sentiment feels generic at times – but there is a pulsating megamix of Cardi B, Doja Cat and more, a spectacular array of costumes, and a coherent staging incorporating slick lights, big sound, and a lot of hi-viz jackets and danger signs. Most of all, there is an infectious atmosphere of anger and celebration.

FERGUS MORGAN

READ MORE: Fringe Firsts week one: we reveal the first five winners of the Scotsman's prestigious theatre prizes

CABARET AND VARIETY

Arthur Hull's Flop: The Best Songs From The Worst Musicals Ever Written ★★★

Gilded Balloon Appleton Tower (Venue 140) until 24 August

Arthur is 20 years old with ridiculous amounts of stagecraft and skill, all of which are on display here. He commands the room, even when standing upside down to introduce Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark, which is, to date, at $70 million, Broadway's biggest flop. But it did have one nice song, which Arthur sings, he says 'as' a creative, 'to' the creatives and 'for' the creatives who go down with the ship of a failed musical.

Not all the songs here are lovely, in fact most of them are quite awful – particularly those from Diana, The Musical, Tammy Faye(for which Elton John was guilty) and an unsettlingly sexual anthem from Grease II – but, as he tells us, Arthur just likes singing them. Doing so with a little more vocal light and shade would improve things. Both King Kong and Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber make appearances and the latter's Love Never Dies (doomed sequel to Phantom of the Opera) gives us one of the show's loveliest songs. Arthur brilliantly eviscerates Tom Hooper's film version of Cats, does a mean Prince (as he then was) Charles impression and gives us an impressively 'Scandalous' version of A Girl's Gotta Do What A Girl's Gotta Do.

KATE COPSTICK

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