Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Amazons
Gaël Le Cornec and Footprint Productions
Genre: Autobiography, Historical, One Person Show, Theatre
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Amazons is the spirited new solo show by award winning theatremaker Gaël Le Cornec. Her previous work includes Frida Kahlo: Viva La Vida and Camille Claudel. Through the history of the Amazon rainforest and more broadly the colonization of the Americas, she tells us her personal story of moving to London from Brazil and gaining British citizenship.
Review
It is a comical start, a woman dressed as a Spanish conquistador bounds on to the stage chattering to the audience through a loosely attached beard, satirising the genocidal invasion of America and its indigenous population. The mood then gets more serious before becoming more playful again and continues to go through mood and thematic changes, from reflective and carefree to educational and dark.
There is a large screen that dominates the back wall of the small stage area. It is used to livestream the character’s life in real time from the stage, talking about her time house sitting in London as she awaits her citizenship.
She uses the method first to show us where she’s from: the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. From her little desk she zooms in on miniature models of the forest and the river, her mother and sisters and the little row of houses where they lived. This is a lovely storytelling technique. The screen is also used for animation, photographs and video to showcase her story and the life and history of the Amazon.
There are several overarching themes at play, of violence against women, at one point announcing the names of some of the forgotten murdered women of the Amazon. The other of course is the environment and ecology. Playing her grandmother, she wails mournfully as we hear of the trauma she felt as her favourite tree is felled. Le Cornec wears a green jersey, the same material as the model jungle, and a green skirt.
She plays and voices numerous other parts, from aunties to explorers. She questions her heritage through an investigation of curly hair types. Her mothers name is the generic ‘Batista’, a name given to many there by missionaries, and this makes it impossible to know anything more about her ancestors, symbolising the open wound of many indigenous peoples.
The thrust of this show is the many facets of Amazonian culture, and that is told quite beautifully. However, Gaël Le Cornec has indigenous heritage on her mothers side only, her father is French, and that is only mentioned in passing, which I felt was an oversight. I would like to have heard about that. It is also never explained why she is actually getting British citizenship, which I cared less about. The assumption for doing this play is that she wants to go ‘back to her roots‘, but that history is only half of her story. I felt the exclusion of her father’s side and not explaining the context of getting citizenship both dilute or contradict the overall point: She seems to be very happy to be getting away from Brazil but at the same time is reminiscing about it. The ending also could have been stronger, it feels drawn out and lacks power somewhat.
Getting past this though there is much to like here, she succeeds in balancing a serious subject with both depth and humour and at the end there is a positive glow felt in the audience. The writing is very good overall and she has an infectious energy as a performer. I’m sure she has lots more excellent work to come.
