Edinburgh Fringe 2025
That’s Why Mums Go to Switzerland
Bonnie Oddie with True Story London
Genre: Dark Comedy, Dramedy, Feminist Theatre, One Person Show, Solo Show, Storytelling
Venue: C Arts
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A richly layered solo play showing a woman juggling teenage daughters, a crumbling marriage, and an aging mother with dementia who wants to end her life at Dignitas in Switzerland. This is a funny, emotionally precise piece that leaves you wanting more.
Review
In That’s Why Mums Go to Switzerland, a middle-aged woman suggests to her widowed mother that they all move in together, a gesture she assumes will be declined. It isn’t. What follows is an exquisite story of a life simultaneously moving along and coming apart: the collapse of a marriage, the rise of adolescent chaos, and the heavy truth of a mother planning her own death.
This is one of the best-crafted shows at the Fringe. It evokes the emotional and narrative density of a Claire Keegan novella: succinct while still rich and fully alive in every moment. You walk away with a full sense of these characters- their rhythms, their disappointments, their shared home, and all the things they can’t say aloud. The show is never overwrought or sensationalized; instead it trusts the audience with the truth of what it is, and it delivers an expected, and yet still heavy emotional punch. I left wondering if writer/performer Bonnie Oddie eats details for breakfast- that’s how thoroughly and precisely they infuse her work.
After the third husband dies, the grandmother, the matriarch of the family, begins living with her daughter, along with her son-in-law, two granddaughters, and their dog. Six months later, the husband leaves. What remains is a house of women: three generations, plus the dog (that seems to know everything). It’s all held together by one woman who bears the entire emotional and logistical burden. The daughters are growing up and they’re moody and unkind. The grandmother is in cognitive decline, growing increasingly sharper-edged. And eventually it’s revealed, not through personal confession, but via a family friend, that she has dementia. We then learn she wants to pursue assisted suicide at Dignitas in Switzerland.
The way the play handles this material is a masterclass in both propulsion and restraint. The story is layered with grief, duty, resentment, quiet humor, and profound questions of what exactly does responsibility and love look like in this context. And yet, it never feels overloaded. The pacing is exact, the transitions are seamless, and the emotional truth lands and it lingers.
Within the first moment of Oddie speaking, there is a sense you have the privilege of witnessing an exceptional piece of theatre. She brings a fusion of talent to the stage that makes her captivating. A foundation in dance leads her physicality to always feel purposeful and choreographed, and it brings a sense of movement to the storytelling that allows it to develop with both momentum and ease.
The show’s efficiency also comes down to set design and direction. The staging is economical: a clothesline stretched between two trees, with garments put up, taken down, and manipulated to reflect the shifting dynamics between characters. The blocking and stage movement are all in service of clarity and emotional nuance. Oddie moves between roles fluidly, giving us distinct emotional beats and fully inhabited characters without excess.
This is the kind of show that leaves you wanting more. Not because anything was missing, but rather it’s just so well done that it invites a second (or third) viewing. It’s currently in a roughly 30-seat venue; cozy and intimate, but could hold its own in a much larger space. It’s also a show that could- and should- live well beyond the Fringe: in theatres, in school curricula, and any space where people are asked to sit with the complicated realities of caretaking, aging, and death with dignity.
It’s also worth emphasizing the conditions under which this production came to the Fringe. The team secured their venue just two weeks before opening. The fact that such a fully realized, high-caliber piece of theatre emerged under those circumstances is impressive in its own right.
That’s Why Mums Go to Switzerland is crushing, economical, and deeply human. It handles its difficult subject matter with elegance, emotional intelligence, and just enough levity to breathe through the grief.
This work is Outstanding for its attention to detail and craftsmanship in writing, performance, and direction, and for how it unfolds the important, nuanced questions around love and death.
There are shows that ask to be noticed. This one doesn’t. It trusts its own depth and the audience’s ability to meet it there.
