The best fringe moments are discovering something unexpected and brilliant. World-renowned cellist Karen Hall’s Delusions and Grandeur is both.
A thought-provoking, inventive and emotional hour of storytelling that is bursting with talent.
The blurb isn’t quite clear, though. “Come for the music, stay for the existential crisis,” it suggests.
Audiences are told to expect a “classical cello recital” that “plays out like a piece of performance art run by a masterly jester”. Its one of those examples of marketing that makes total sense after the event.
Hall’s one-woman show is, essentially, a recital of Bach’s famous Suite No. 1, interspersed with part monologue, part audience dialogue that tells her own musical story and poses some fascinating questions.
What does it really mean to create a unique piece of classical music artistry? When does mastery of a craft become insanity? Is your life decided for you if you become too good at one thing?
It doesn’t stop there. The formality of concert halls, the leering misogyny still present in the corporate world, the physical and mental burnout artists face as funding fades.
Hall tackles all these ideas, and more, as deftly as she wields her bow. With a profundity and intelligence, but also with a lightness of touch and a sense of comic timing that only a graduate of clown training would understand.
Arrive on time because the show begins as the audience take their seats. Hall munching on a Subway sandwich, interacting with her guests. Before seamlessly segueing into the prelude we all know and love.
Delusions and Grandeur is also intensely personal.
You’ll cry with Hall as you hear about how the ‘cool’ girl who inspired her to pick up a cello did not enjoy the same success.
The performer’s physicality is perhaps the biggest surprise of the night. Hall folds and contorts herself into some extraordinary shapes, going through several costume changes in the process, as she perfectly encapsulates the complexity of living as a classical musician.
You’ll laugh out loud too. At one point Hall desperately, and hilariously, empties her bag of all the expensive accessories a cellist is forced to carry with them at all times. There are a lot of pencils. It is a perfect example of physical comedy right on the cusp of bittersweet desperation.
At one stage, Hall plays a Bach movement and locks eyes with every audience member in turn. It is a gift of a moment everyone will surely treasure.
This is a thoroughly researched, expertly directed and well-rehearsed piece of fringe theatre.
As Hall concludes she returns to a fact she’d revealed earlier in the hour. We forget up to 80% of what we hear within a day. You really won’t forget hearing or seeing this in a hurry.
Delusions and Grandeur runs until 20th July at the Anthony Burgess Foundation, as part of the GM Fringe, with tickets available at: https://greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk/events
Reviewer: Peter Ruddick
Reviewed: 19th July 2025
North West End UK Rating: