Scotland

The Singer – Traverse Theatre

There is a lovely irony running through The Singer. This is a show fascinated by the importance of finding the flow in music, yet it is a production which repeatedly struggles to find its own.

Perhaps that is entirely intentional. Life is messy. Creativity is messy. Relationships are certainly messy, and the relationship between Joe, a profoundly Deaf songwriter, and Andy, a musician whose own career has fallen apart, was never going to travel in a conveniently straight line.

So perhaps the stops, starts and sudden changes of direction are part of Cora Bissett’s design. But that raises another question. Is the mess what an audience actually wants, or do we still crave the simplicity of a story which knows where it is taking us?

There is an enormous amount to admire here.

Jamie Rea and Dylan Wood are excellent as Joe and Andy, and the performances are strong across the board. KT Tunstall’s music absolutely delivers, while the visual design is extraordinary. BSL and captioning aren’t simply accessibility devices but part of the theatrical vocabulary of the production.

I particularly loved the Oracles. Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Petre Dobre bring a poetry to these interventions which at times becomes almost a spoken-word performance in its own right, lyrical, beautiful and frequently more affecting than the larger theatrical gestures surrounding it.

And perhaps “larger” is important.

Dundee Rep’s The History of Paper was one of my highlights of last year’s Fringe. Staged in Traverse 2, in the round, it had an intimacy and emotional immediacy which allowed the audience extraordinarily close to its characters. There was a breaking down of barriers between performer and audience.

The Singer takes almost the opposite approach.

We have moved into Traverse 1 and something approaching a stadium-gig aesthetic. Everything has become bigger, the music, the visuals, the space and the theatrical gestures. Yet in becoming bigger, something has also become more distant.

That leaves me with an unusual problem. The Singer appears to tick almost every box. The performances are terrific. The music is superb. The story matters. The design is inventive and its commitment to inclusivity is embedded throughout the production rather than appended to it.

And yet.

There is something at its heart which doesn’t quite connect.

Perhaps The Singer is deliberately refusing the neat emotional journey we expect it to provide. If so, that is a brave decision. But inclusivity, technical accomplishment and good intentions cannot themselves manufacture emotional connection.

Sometimes you can hear every note and still not quite feel the song.

Playing until August 30th 2026,https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026SINGER

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 9^th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating: