Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Arachne
Britt Anderson, Whisper Theatre
Genre: Feminist Theatre
Venue: Willow Studio at Greenside @ Riddles Court
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Britt Anderson’s Arachne is a batty, whip-smart solo show that reframes Greek mythology with pop culture, spiderwebs, and feminist bite.
Review
Arachne and Athena’s myth gets pulled apart and rewoven in this clever and contemporary take by Chicago-based writer/performer Britt Anderson and The Whisper Theatre Collective. This is not your dusty textbook version. It’s bold, physical, and full of fun surprises that carry a sharp sting.
Anderson commands the stage as a solo performer, slipping into a cast of mythological figures with ease and wit. There’s a sense of play and chaos in the first few minutes, a little fluttery, like she and the audience are figuring out where we’re headed together. But once she clicks in, Anderson holds the thread with clear confidence. Her physical choices are often silly but smart, and she builds character detail through shifts in body and voice that are precise and compelling. Her transitions feel seamless, especially in emotionally driven moments where humour turns to heartache.
Framed as a memoir launch for the goddess Athena, the show unfolds into a subversive spiral of flashbacks, music, and mess. Anderson invites the audience in as co-conspirators, letting us serve as couriers, sheep, and witnesses, which gives the piece a loose sense of communal judgment. We’re witnesses, perhaps implicated as the baaing masses, but gently so.
The production design is rough in the right ways. Props and costume pieces feel found rather than fussy, with ribbons, podiums, and pink tutus scattered around like detritus of a divinity on the brink. But there’s a visual centre to it all in the use of glow-in-the-dark webs. These erupt at key moments and linger as a striking metaphor for consequence. They stick.
It’s in the quieter scenes where Anderson lands her punches. One especially jarring moment involving Medea’s exile after Poseidon’s assault and Athena’s callous reaction hits hard with physicality and tangled grit. These pockets of rawness allow the comedy to stretch wider and the message to cut deeper. There are moments of provocation and madness, most sharply conveyed in the depiction of “Daddy Zeus” and his lightning rod—hard not to think of the self-proclaimed gods of men so prevalent today. When the final image arrives, it’s contemplative and feels of the moment.
If there’s a criticism, it’s that the Southern accent motif feels uneven. Sometimes it lands as a purposeful camp, sometimes it distracts. A few jokes or references might pass you by if you’re not in the right mythological mindset. But these preferential missteps are minor next to the overall inventiveness of the piece.
Arachne asks who gets to spin the story and who gets tangled in its consequences. It’s silly, subversive, and surprisingly moving. Britt Anderson is one to watch, and this piece confirms she can hold a room with guts and imagination.
