Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Do You Accept These Charges?
Laurie Magers in Association with Suzanna Rosenthal Productions
Genre: Theatre
Venue: Pleasance
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Review
Many women like a bad boy, and Los Angeles-based actor/comedian Laurie Magers owns it. She wears it. She opens her show waiting in line on Christmas Day to visit her boyfriend- in prison.
Who would do such a thing? A woman in love. So in love she’s a love addict. Magers walks us through how a relationship like this made sense to her at the time. She was twenty-four, swiping through a dating app, and a sexually free feminist. Being a chill girl, she didn’t flinch at his ankle bracelet- and for four seemingly sweet months everything was going great- until he got locked up again.
But him being behind bars didn’t put mud in her wheels- she, herself, was committed. She was even planning to marry him. But overtime, that distance did give her pause and time to reflect. That’s when the rose colored glasses begin to slowly come off and Magers starts to see she’s left with a raw deal- partly of her own making. And that’s where the real heart of this story resides.
This is a layered, nuanced story, with much variety. Magers deftly moves from heavy to light subject-wise, hot to cold in emotional intensity, intellectual to silly in character. The show is multi-dimensional because she and her experience are multi-dimensional. There are several props and simple costume changes, along with images projected on a screen behind her that effectively add to a sense of time and space without distraction (though, a version of this show could exist without them- that’s how strong the storytelling and performance are). All of the shapeshifting helps hold interest.
Magers gives us a brief overview of her training, and her background as an improviser really comes through. She moves through scenes with agility, responds to light audience interaction without missing a beat, and leans into the cringier moments with such ease and commitment that they become important and necessary highlights of the show.
Particularly compelling are moments when Magers steps out of the main narrative to give the audience helpful sociological and historical context. She does this to provide some understanding of the US prison system (important to international audiences, though arguably more important for Americans to know), and how her mother, a leftist activist who fled the Philippines for the United States, was an excellent provider but emotionally withholding. These bits of information were fascinating, and if the show continues on after the Fringe with longer run times, it could contain more of this.
While I am personally glad things worked out the way they did, from a storytelling perspective the ending is conventional, and it is unclear if that choice was intentional. For a piece that is so daring, shocking, and risk taking, the ending could be pushed further to keep the audience’s mind tickling all the way through.
Do You Accept These Charges? is a prime candidate for post-show talkbacks in future iterations- with psychologists, prison-reform advocates, and other artists exploring intimacy and harm in relationships.
This show is Highly Recommended for its strong writing, performance, and for the important conversations it will generate around the topics it addresses.
