Brighton Fringe 2026
The Final Episode
Kathryn Mincer
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: The Lantern Theatre, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
Five podcasts but this is the final cut. A frightened red-lit Caley apologies to her huge fan base, which shot to a million after the first episode. But she has to explain. She made a stupid mistake and now she must tell all. Even though the voice tells her not to. Kathryn Mincer writes and performs The Final Episode at the Lantern main Studio till May 3.
Two original twists, a fine, fresh writer/performer/director and something I certainly look forward to seeing developed.
Review
Five podcasts but this is the final cut. A frightened red-lit Caley apologies to her huge fan base, which shot to a million after the first episode. But she has to explain. She made a stupid mistake and now – with an oddly American police voice yammering at the door – she must tell all. Even though the voice tells her not to. Kathryn Mincer writes, directs and performs The Final Episode at the Lantern main Studio till May 3.
Cut to a blue-lit, cool and delighted reporter opening up about the Ashfelt Project. “You might just know it, but the government don’t like people digging and getting near the truth. So some people – it may be you – are caught and given a little injection. All you’ll see is a perfectly round mole in your middle finger. And your memory even your personality might have been erased.”
Carly goes on. Mincer engages, flicking from the terrified red present to the boppy quietly joyous young woman who finally finds her niche. It’s engaging and compelling.
“Some people have been disappeared. Their records erase, their families traumatized then brainwashed into believing they never existed.”
And there’s a psychiatrist who in the late 1970s discovered how to do this. Patrick Densey. Carly goes in to play a clip we don’t hear, apparently where not all screams are able to be erased. Densey himself calls, now frail and frightened but with a dark enough voice ordering her to stop. So does her mother, and some of Caley’s backstory – someone who her mother never felt as good enough – shades in motive. That and finding out that journalists aren’t meant to report, but write columns. Both these themes might be developed further.
Because Carly’s followers are also amassing. And one woman in particular won’t take research as knowledge but action. Carly demurs. “Thank you. We’ll take it from here.” Carly finds there’s a rally. She goes. The outfall is extraordinary. And there’s consequences. And a twist.
The Studio is adorned with a writing desk computer and recording equipment. Lighting handled by Ewan MacQuire-Plows is crisp and Mincer shifts in a shade-shift with it.
This is a two-edged play where the obvious government conspiracy is countered by a million, many people convinced the government won’t get away with it this time. There’s a flavour of Q Anon and conspiracy theorists burgeoning around Covid. This is the play’s originality and strength. That the persecuted can become classic persecutors themselves. Not that the government don’t deserve all the hostility they can’t handle. “They can’t silence all of us” one of the voices in the impressive soundscape intones. Technical realisation is slick, solid and impressively multi-voiced.
The twist is something to jag and tease at the mind.
Lasting 36 minutes this is a play in need of development though it’s difficult to see where such a taut-written piece could go. I’m reminded of Lucy Kirkwood’s 2022 Rapture. Which was shrouded (even with a fake wrapper round the book) by a faux writer Dave Davidson and title This is Not Who I Am. And indeed it wasn’t.
This 2023 two-hander (for most of its 100 minutes) concerns a couple who delve too far into the government’s control, create a huge online fan base and are found dead in mysterious circumstances; with contradictory items of evidence after a large demonstration at Trafalgar Square is blacked out. Now it’s long over I can mention the sight of Kirkwood herself coming on as people are being suddenly ushered out (“this is a writers’ theatre”) and being shot by police, certainly stirred.
Its Achilles heel at the time was that the government generally didn’t care. That’s changed. And Mincer is on to something, by weaponising both sides – protesters and government – and leaving us too to decide what Caley really means in her final episode. Two original twists, a fine, fresh writer/performer/director and something I certainly look forward to seeing developed.
Ewan MacQuire-Plows (they/them) is the Technician for the run at the Lantern Theatre.
The voiceovers were provided by: Moritz Bauer (Police Officer), Ola Forman (Podcast Caller), Kyle McSporran (Patrick Densey), Jack Chambers, Alexandra Cook, Megan Nicholson, Annika Foster.
