Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Altar
Extraterrestrial
Genre: Devised, LGBTQ+, Theatre
Venue: Underbelly, Wee Coo, George Square
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Writer Em Tambree has created a brave and beautifully observed narrative. In the hustle and bustle of George Square we find an unexpected moment of stillness and thought and leave deeply touched and eventually furious at this world where love of a different kind is too often frowned upon, nay impossible, nay forbidden.
Review
A bride, a beautiful conventional bride, dress, hair and flowers just so, Pachelbel’s canon playing, a very traditional wedding it seems as she stands in a spotlight and tells us how she had planned her perfect wedding in great detail since she was five. And the napkins would be: Eggshell. Eggshell? Fragile? No, crisp. Yes, but eggshell, eggshells are fragile.
And so it turns out to be, this marriage is not built on solid ground. Beautiful, old fashioned Sutton is marrying a guy she went to highschool with, a bit of a bully, “But he has been working on himself” so she can grow up in the neighbourhood where she feels safe, where people will know her and look after her future children, where she keeps her place in the society she belongs to.
In a room just off the festivities a young man waits for Sutton to come and find him. He wears a white shirt, nice waistcoat, his hair well cut, a cute young man, probably an old friend. He has stepped outside for a cigarette, two cans of beer on the floor, sitting on what looks very much like a church pew. A nod to the title of the play, Altar, the wedding takes place so near the church that you can nip back in if you feel the need to… pray? And Sutton feels the need, has someone told her that Dana is here? Yes, Dana is here, but Dana is Dan. “I didn’t expect you to come.” “But you invited me.” “Yes.”
Kat Yates the director has done something very different with this play to every other show I have so far seen at this Fringe. There are pauses. Real long pauses where you as a member of the audience watch the protagonists and have time to think, to take in what you have just heard, and what you see. You notice how in certain moments the light changes subtly from cold to warm. The hand that guides this play is very assured in their craft.
As soon as you hear Dan ‘s name, something Sutton said earlier makes sense, how she could never imagine her best friend in a bridesmaid’s dress. And while you are pondering the consequences of that you wonder about Sutton’s gorgeous wedding dress that keeps slipping off her shoulders and is definitely too long for her. It tangles around her feet, it is grubby at the hem. She is entangled in her vision of the perfect wedding, the perfect future does not exist, it sits uncomfortably on her body. And here, in front of her, stands the reason why.
Dan challenges Sutton’s belief, how can she be a science teacher and a Christian? Sutton explains her belief in particle physics, how God is a scientific problem that will be discovered at some point in the future. She believes God is found in the loving union between a man and a woman but when Dan asks whether she believes she will find it in the union with her new husband, her answer is no. Another pause. No. She already knows that this is not The Love, just enough love. The real love she had is the one she decided to lose, to let go of, to send away. Why? Because it was against convention, it wasn’t safe. Her slow handclap for the sacrifice Dan/a made as a teenager, when he was beaten up and protected Sutton from being recognised as his partner, is the most painful moment of the play. Each sharp clap a devastating blow.
Why does lost love hurt so much? Why are so many plays in the Fringe, well in the world, about missing love: be it the father who was never there, the mother who didn’t care or preferred another sibling, the one who died too early, the parent who couldn’t accept your choices? The lover who disappointed, who chose another, who was not allowed? Sutton and Dan both say: “If anyone felt it, it’s true”, so why forbid love? This play feels like a silent scream of hurt: Why are we not allowed to pray on the Altar of love?
During the pauses in the play, we hear people quietly cry. Is there anyone in the room who has not experienced this pain? The relationship between Eddie Pattinson as Dan and Evie Marie Korver as Sutton is beautifully acted. They are both deeply intense, then playful (the shoe fight!!), then so attracted to each other, it takes our breath away. We are willing them on to defy convention.
Writer Em Tambree has created a brave and beautifully observed narrative. In the hustle and bustle of George Square we find an unexpected moment of stillness and thought in the Wee Coo and leave deeply touched and eventually furious at this world where love of a different kind is too often frowned upon, nay impossible, nay forbidden. This play comes from Australia and at the beginning a voice-over thanks and acknowledges the First Nations whose land the company shares.
@altartheshow
