Brighton Fringe 2026
With All My Fondest Love
Noah Wild
Genre: Solo Show, Storytelling
Venue: Lantern Theatre
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
Review
This is a memory story and its genius lies in its ability to create parallel narratives of three sets of lives, joined by family connection in a direct line of descent. Yet these parallel lives reach back through the generations while being shared alongside one another, allowing an interlacing and weaving of theme, life lessons, pain and revelation. Insight is gained from each individual story, but also from taking them all as a whole, throwing light on the future that our host performer is facing in his own attempt to cope with a separation that is unbearable and yet must be borne.
From a dramaturgical point of view, the piece would benefit from being about 10 minutes shorter, and there comes a point, after just about an hour, where the piece could have closed satisfyingly but continued. Though the material remained precious and engaging, energy dropped slightly in the audience. There was a little repetition and some parts of the story could be tightened, particularly as families develop through their ups and downs, tragedies, warm insights, declarations and demonstrations of love.
This is ultimately a treatise on love delivered through some excellent writing, which is essentially a fairly long short story rendered in drama. The staging is simple as we are taken into the attic of a house where boxes reveal stories that stand alone but also intertwine with the next box and what it reveals.
We arrive in the present, but the present is rooted in the past, and this adds layers to the piece as both theatre and satisfying literature.
In places this is very tightly directed and staged, and the acting is highly theatrical, but in other places it is simply very well delivered monologue, and there is scope here to decide more coherently which of these modes the piece wishes to inhabit. At times it is overloaded and top-heavy with text when less would be more, but it is so well written as literature that it still carries itself successfully.
What finally emerges is a thoughtful and emotionally intelligent exploration of inheritance, memory and endurance. The piece understands that family stories do not disappear once they are over, but continue echoing through later generations. Even where the production could be leaner and more formally resolved, its emotional truth, literary quality and compassion remain consistently compelling.
