Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Remember That Time
Annemarie Cullen
Genre: Live Music, Multimedia, Musical Stories, Musical Theatre, New Writing, Storytelling
Venue: The Space, Surgeons Hall, Theatre 2
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Beginning with a simple phone call, Remember That Time immediately sets a tone of intimacy and emotional honesty. What follows is a seamless blend of live music, storytelling and multimedia that explores memory, identity and creative journeys. It is moving, funny, and strikingly relatable and draws us instantly into a world of vulnerability, humour, and lyricism. The song cycle folds memory and music into one, it is as relatable as it is profound. This is not self-congratulation; it is self-reflection, and it lands with striking intimacy.
Review
The audience is drawn in from the very first moment. One half of a despondent phone conversation, and a voice tinged with disappointment, provide all the exposition needed. In seconds we understand the situation, the mood and the direction of travel, and the show moves straight into the first musical number. It is an elegant and economical way to begin.
Award-winning Dublin-born songwriter, Annemarie Cullen is a natural storyteller, combining openness with humour. Her stage presence is warm, engaging and refreshingly free of pretension. There is no sense of superiority or detachment from the audience. Instead, she welcomes us into her world with ease. This is not a story about past fame but rather a reflection on the course of life and the way music weaves through it.
The decision to perform her own songs live rather than rely on recorded video material edited in to the existing clips is brave but entirely justified. Live music carries a sense of presence and risk, and in this context it makes the storytelling more immediate and powerful. The effect is to strengthen the bond between performer and audience.
Several songs strike particularly deep chords. The Girl in the Mirror track resonates with a universal sense of self-reflection and contains a line that moved this reviewer to tears. Other lyrics “I don’t think you’ll be the cure, but I bet you’ll be the Novocaine” and lines such as “ I had broken up with myself” cut through with biting honesty, turning tenderness into something sharper and instantly recognisable. This balance of vulnerability and edge is one of the show’s strongest features.
Multimedia elements are used with clever restraint. The three-way video call segment is instantly recognisable and generates laughter through its familiarity. The creative use of the spinning connection symbol (aka The Wheel of Death) to disguise video transitions is ingenious, adding humour while covering any potential technical challenges. Technology never interrupts the flow; instead, it becomes part of the storytelling itself.
Even the smallest mishap is handled with professionalism. A slightly late cue in a Barcelona segment could have passed unnoticed, but when acknowledged, it was done with such speed and good humour that the audience remained fully engaged and were invited in as part of the “we” who “got through it”. It became a reminder that memory itself is not always perfectly aligned.
The style of music crosses genres, with elements of Joan Baez, Crystal Gayle and a sprinkling of The Cors, with a good spoonful of Cullen making this a delicious recipe.
If the performer was, as mentioned, in her mid-forties during her years spent in Barcelona, then the passing of time has been kinder than she perceives, as her fresh-faced smile and Irish twinkle in the eye hint at girlish charm. Maybe we all need some introspection and stage lights to maintain our youth and cycle round to new beginnings as hopeful as this piece suggests.
If there is one point for consideration, it might be the projection size. There could be value in experimenting with a larger image, perhaps by repositioning the tripod at the cost of a single front row seat. Whether this would enhance the experience without disrupting intimacy is a question worth exploring.
