The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with over 3,700 shows. This year, Playbill is on board our FringeShip for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!
As part of our Edinburgh Fringe coverage, Playbill is seeing a whole lotta shows—and we're letting you know what we think of them. Consider these reviews a friendly, opinionated guide as you try to choose a show at the festival.
One of the greatest pleasures of the Edinburgh Fringe is its uncanny ability to elevate pure, unvarnished talent. With its lightning fast turnaround time and ever-shifting ecosystem, the traditional trappings of audience distraction aren't really available; no one has the space or the budget for a flashy set, glimmering costumes, or other spectacular accoutrement.
Instead, artists have to rely on the purity of their artistry to hold an audience. Sink or swim, the entire endeavor relies on that heady communion between performer and perceiver, and whatever word-of-mouth it inspires. If you're looking to experience that breath-quickening experience, look no further than Keith Alessi's Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life, on offer at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall.
The autobiographical piece, which Alessi has developed across two previous Fringes, is a near perfect microcosm of what makes the festival such an addictive thrill. Clad in a simple button-up shirt, slacks, and a mossy green baseball cap, Alessi cuts an unassuming figure, looking almost like an audience member thrust suddenly upon the stage. Then, with a soft smile, he picks up a banjo.
Look. The banjo isn't for everyone. Alessi makes a point of joking throughout the performance about its lack of universal appeal, telling wise-cracks at the instrument and its players' expense while continually tuning and retuning between songs. But in Alessi's hands, I challenge even the most reticent of listeners to not leave with a newfound love for the instrument's endearing peculiarities.
Alessi's charm is infectious, carrying himself with the ebullient ease of a favorite uncle, or beloved neighbor. On stage, he presents as the kind of man to sneak sweets to passing children during a wake, just to see them smile through the storm of tragedy. The kind of man to easily exclaim, "Oh, you've endured a trial? Sit and let me play for you a while, and I will delicately pick them all away."
The Canadian son of Italian immigrants, Alessi is not some big-name Banjo Professional; self-described as intermediate on his best days, his path to now owning between 30 and 52 banjos at a time was an unpredictable one. Initially dreaming of a future as a pilot, Alessi pursued a career as an accountant with a penchant for professional gambling; on companies, that is. Alessi was, at one point, one of the most successful businessmen in the Western world, known for transforming failing businesses into billion-dollar behemoths. All the while, he harbored shoved-aside dreams to one day play the banjo, inspired by his childhood love of Jed Clampett and the Beverly Hillbillies.
Then came the cancer.
Stage 3b esophageal cancer, to be exact. Prompted by the acid reflux his work stress and tomato consumption had triggered, Alessi was given a 50/50 chance of living a year. What could have broken less driven men became his motivating force to finally take his starter banjo out of the closet. "Did I merely want to survive? Or did I truly want to live?"
Living through and for the music won. For Alessi, the banjo represented hope and life, with his millennial-filled banjo class becoming his lifeline to the world outside of his immediate family. With one sister lost to a cult, a brother AWOL, and his own identity in tatters, he depended on the music (and the act of making it) to survive. And after a grueling seven-hour surgery, which removed his esophagus and moved his stomach into his chest cavity, he woke up singing Willie Nelson.
Remarkably, that's only a quarter of his story. Like a multifaceted jewel, every twist of Alessi's wrist reveals new moments of fascination, both heartbreaking and heartwarming. His stage is bare except for himself, a stool, and a handful of banjos. It is his purity of self that draws the audience in, his story glistening with intrigue yet unvarnished by twisted truths. It is storytelling at its finest, a fitting descendent of the bards and balladeers who have gathered crowds about them for millennia, eyes gleaming in the firelight.
Alessi wields no open flame, but as he picks his way through the performance, you can feel its heat. Bring your troubles through his door, and he's sure to sooth your soul, if only for an hour.
Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life runs at theSpace @ Surgeon's Hall through August 24. Get tickets here.
