Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Up!
Visible Fictions
Genre: Theatre
Venue: Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
This is the tale of Jay and Jamie who got on a plane and sat next to each other. As a piece of theatre, this works because the story is told using all the theatre arts available – set, props, costume, sound and lighting – effectively. Whilst relatively easy to understand, this has a complexity which manages to elevate it and provide a really fascinating story of two people; one of whom has had all the luck in the world and the other who is yet to find any.
Review
Whilst we are left wondering what happened at the end, exactly as luck would have it, Visible Fictions have managed once more to use theatre in a surprising and creative way to tell a story and bring in a more profound message – if you want luck, think positively.
It is creatively framed, through bringing together two bizarrely contrasting characters, with lives in a form of opposition to each other, they intensify the origins of their outlooks by using inflated origin stories: nobody is that lucky and none by contrast that unlucky. And so, as we encounter Jay seeing things and winning things that others don’t, for Jamie we have the unfortunate death of a fiancé. And so, between the two of them they might make a perfect couple, a complete whole person, but that is not how life imagines it. They are sat in a plane and whilst Jamie is absolutely convinced that it’s going to crash, Jay is more optimistic that if it should crash that what will happen is that they will walk out as survivors – and that is much more believable as you take your pessimistic friend out with your unflinching optimistic one.
The story evolves through flashback and tabletop theatrics as each tell each other’s backstory. For Jay that was finding their perfect partner until Sophie decided that she didn’t want to be with him because she found it difficult to live with his luck. For Jamie she is on the plane with the ashes of her dear mother to scatter in Peru. We discover that despite her constantly having accidents and being unlucky she found a man who would stick by her until they were having a picnic at the top of a cliff edge, and he fell to his death.
This story leads to one being on the plane with a purpose thinking it will all end and Jay, having met Sophie in the concourse of the airport and been told by her that, he may be the luckiest man alive, but he is also the loneliest. It is a thought that sticks with him.
Jay and Jamie frequently break the fourth wall to talk over the events and their significance including Professor Richard Wiseman’s view of how luck translates into getting luck – where people who are positive attract more luck.
Theatrically this is an idea spun into a theatrical telling of it through example. And that is what makes it work so well. It knows it’s theatrical landscape and uses it effectively to tell a story based upon a theory. That you may disagree with the theory is allowable because there is not much in here to disagree with. But there is plenty to be entertained by. It is scripted beautifully, with a firm direction adept at getting the humour bur never forgetting the point of the exercise. Both actors are tremendous at building the relationship and brining the absurdity of thinking as well as the frustration of always being right, whilst never losing the anchoring nature of it being about people.
Technically the set is tremendous and getting a set which can often be a treat much longed for at the Fringe with rapid get outs! The use of audience interaction may be minimal, but it adds to the effect.
There were a few set pieces that worked exceptionally well, the airline meals in particular with the snooty air hostess being just one that sticks out. The mystery of the ending similarly works well.
Once more Visible Fictions have taken something that might seem odd on a stage, added theatrical creativity to it and delivered a piece of pure theatre.
