Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Paris in a Jazz Age: The Memoirs of Eloise Defleur
The Hot Jazz Vagabonds
Genre: Live Music, Theatre
Venue: theSpace@Surgeons Hall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Step back to a more hedonist age and into a 1930’s Parisian café to savour the delights of music, romance and glamour through the eyes of chanteuse Eloise DeFleur (the suave, sophisticated alter ego of Airlie Scott) and her very talented Hot Jazz Vagabonds band.
Review
One of the many great things about the Fringe is the chance to escape the pressures of the 21st Century hurly burly and step back to a more hedonist age. Like a 1930’s Parisian café, for example, to savour the delights of music, romance and glamour through the eyes of chanteuse Eloise DeFleur (the suave, sophisticated alter ego of Airlie Scott) and her very talented Hot Jazz Vagabonds band.
OK, so theSpaceUK’s rather stark Fleming Theatre perhaps lacks un peu de ce “je ne sais quoi” typiquement français – bustling waiters, flowing wine and the lingering smoke of Gauloises springs most immediately to mind – but close your eyes as the music flows around you and you could, conceivably, imagine you’re in the city of art, amour et lumière.
The action centres on the chanteuse Eloise DeFleur, the rather glamorous alter ego created by the engaging Airlie Scott, as she sashays through a selection of jazz age staples from a range of sources, each song delivered in a way that tells a story, rather than just being sung as a song, something that adds lustre to an already charming concept.
I’m going to avoid the usual musical cliché bingo and just report that Scott’s voice is, well, jolly appropriate to the material she’s singing. More mezzo/alto than pure soprano, Scott’s range and vocal “huskiness” (probably acquired through training rather than having to endure a “60-a-day” habit for years) adds a richness to the lyrics which come across loud and clear thanks to her superb enunciation.
So it was that we heard classics such as “I’m Just Wild About Harry” (from the groundbreaking musical Shuffle Along), Arthur Harrington Gibbs’ “Running Wild”, that Gershwin Tin Pan Alley standard “Somebody Loves Me”, “I Love Paris in the Springtime”, a Cole Porter classic from Can-Can, and “Lady Be Good”, another Gershwin composition, this time by both brothers, from the eponymous Broadway musical comedy. Cole Porter’s “You Do Something To Me” from the musical comedy Fifty Million Frenchmen was a most appropriate inclusion in the set list, as was Berlin’s “Blue Skies”, given the unusual sunshine that’s warmed this year’s Fringe.
And no homage to Paris in a jazz age would be complete without a nod to that doyen of the scene, Django Reinhardt and what better than his 1939 classic, “Don’t Worry About Me”. True, we didn’t have Stephan Grapelli on violin but we did have the urbane Alan Gibson on bass, Pete Elton-Watson on accordion and Andy Ruiz Palma and David Ahmed on acoustic guitar, Scott’s exquisitely chapeau’ed quartet of musicians, producing vibrant sounds to back the vocals and, when let off the leash, some wonderful jam bridges in the true jazz style.
It’s hard to think of a better way to spend an early evening and the hour whizzes by. It’s a show I’d recommend without hesitation to all music lovers……..but for the fact that, by the time you read this, their Fringe run will have finished. Still, they tour the UK on a regular basis, so, if they do show up in your locale, it would be well worth checking them out.
