The beauty of the Edinburgh Fringe lies in the fact that you, as an audience in search of a show, can stumble upon excellence. In a cool, simply lit and arranged corner stage Eric Daniel Weiner gives us a masterclass in resolved, structured storytelling and naturalistic, understated acting. Weiner doesn’t just hold a mirror to life; he holds it with a template in the shape of a Shakespearean sonnet layer over it then proceeds to demonstrate how each part of it fits.
The journey takes place over a lifetime. Our hero, Charlie Katz attends school and is taught the wonder of language by a dying English professor in a small intimate class. The problem is Katz becomes pre-occupied with the mysteries of Sally Templeton, a transfer student on a Squash scholarship who orders her life by controlling it the same way she controls the “T” on the court. This is a brilliant device because the “T” also serves as a means for Katz to grasp at the truth in his moments of melancholia.
At heart, seemingly paralleling author Weiner’s own original life ambitions, Katz loiters in the territory of class clown to impress Templeton, but he’s trapped inside an intelligent, repressive mind that stubbornly refuses to be like his controlling father. This attitude creates failure. A lack of confidence means he doesn’t pursue Sally when he has the perfect chance and suddenly life collapses into a new chapter. Herein lies the quality of this story’s nuance and complexity. Every necessary relationship is explored in balanced detail to lay the foundations for what comes next.
No stone is left unturned but as plot beats these stones are polished and it’s this attention to detail that makes the story so engaging.
As the sonnet’s structured sections move on Templeton is long gone and Katz is a lawyer with a wife, perceived success and four children. He’s happy because he lives in denial refusing to access his greatest emotion – anger. His school crush is long out of his life, his attorney wife will out argue him in a click, but his therapist is there to iron out what truly flaws Charlie Katz. In a fine moment of roaring rage, the pent-up retention is released, and the character breathes new life.
The plot intricacies are vital to the denouement. We come full circle on the sonnet’s importance and after fifty years Katz and Templeton are reunited. Any more detail here is a spoiler to the audience satisfaction of the storytelling on offer. Wiener tells you this tale with great conviction, so much so, that it could be his own life story, however, knowing that this is a controlled balance of fiction is what defines this as theatre of impeccable standard. If it was autobiographical, some elements could be deemed twee, but it isn’t and that makes it all the more considered. This show commands your attention and is deserving of a much larger audience, however, some of the greatest moments in this piece come from the intimacy that can only be created by an actor mesmerizing the small crowd in front of them.
Reviewer: Al Carretta
Reviewed: 26th August 2026
North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:
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