The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with nearly 3,500 shows. This year, Playbill is in Edinburgh for the entire month in August 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 sharing which ones you absolutely must see if you're only at the Fringe for a short amount of time. Consider these Playbill Picks a friendly, opinionated guide as you try to choose a show at the festival.
Adam Lenson is obsessed with the what-ifs. What if he didn't spent the last three hours playing Tetris and did work instead? What if he hadn't passed his A-levels, which would have sent his collegiate plans into a tail-spin? What if he hadn't dropped medical school to become a theatre director?
That obsession is the inspiration behind Lenson's autobiographical new solo musical Anything That We Wanted to Be, playing Summerhall's Cairns Lecture Theatre. Lenson lays his life, insecurities, and anxieties bare in the insightful and moving show, which tracks his life before and after receiving an earth-shattering diagnosis of melanoma. The work premiered in 2022 at Camden People's Theatre under the title But What If You Die? It now makes its Fringe debut.
Lenson—more frequently a director with a résumé that includes productions in London's West End and other major venues like Southwark Playhouse and The Other Palace—is inspired by the work of physicist Hugh Everett III, who in 1957 proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. To vastly over-simplify the concept for those of us without degrees in advanced physics, Everett says that every time we make a choice, another us in a different universe made the opposite choice, meaning we have infinite avatars across infinite universes even though we only ever experience one (and yes that is the plot for the Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once).
Lenson's problem is he thinks he might be in the worst of those universes. With a cancer diagnosis, it's at least hard to make the case that it's the best. As he waits to learn the prognosis, he's plagued with what he thinks had to have been horrible life decisions.
He tells his doctor he knew about the ultimately cancerous mole for three months before getting it checked (he later admits it was actually closer to six). Most pivotally, he fixates on his decision to quit medical school in favor of being a theatre director. Wouldn't life be better with loads more money, success, and a workplace that would have almost surely led to him catching his melanoma at stage one instead of four?
That crisis will likely resonate with anyone who's at least reached the quarter-life milestone. We spend our childhoods being told we can do anything we want. A few decades later, those opportunities start dwindling as each choice we make sets certain pathways in motion. As Lenson puts it evocatively, every aspect of life is the result of "a million tiny accidents." Who hasn't day-dreamed about what their life would be like had they taken a different path? In Anything That We Wanted to Be, Lenson gives this universal experience deep weight as he stares what could easily be a fatal bout of cancer in the face.
Lenson has expertly crafted his story with a uniquely theatrical flair. Presented as a play with music, Lenson regularly steps to the mic to sing out his emotions, usually to the accompaniment of his own recorded voice, giving the score a delightful Rockapella-esque vibe. Lenson isn't the best singer in the world, but that doesn't matter. His performance is raw and unflinching—a triumph. One has to hope that reliving this very real trauma while performing this musical nightly offers him some catharsis, because it often has him revisiting territory few would ever want to return to.
Directed with sensitivity and precision by Hannah Moss, the unique physical production features a spare and effective set by Libby Todd (who also designed the costumes). Three TVs, some shelves, and a tangle of wires are the perfect expression of Lenson's inner mind, from his obsession with video games like Tetris to the unbearable prison of anxiety. The latter is brilliantly rendered through some fancy live sound looping from Lenson (shout out to sound designer Christian Czornyj, who also handles the production's technical production). Combined with Sam Waddington's effective lighting, Anything We Wanted to Be is a transportive experience.
This show doesn't just tell you what anguish feels like, it takes you inside of it.
And most rewardingly, Lenson brings all of this to a climax that bursts through the metaphysical for an ending so profound and moving that I won't spoil it, beyond to share that I left the theatre with tears streaming down my face.
Anything That We Wanted to Be is a fabulous musical about learning to love the life we're in, if for no other reason that this is the one we chose. Lenson somehow makes that point without falling for bubble-gum optimism—he takes you on a journey in which that truth is hard-learned and cathartic.
And it's likely part of that truth that Lenson was able to turn a traumatic year-long battle with cancer into one helluva musical. How can we even know if we've made the "wrong" choice when it's impossible to know the unexpected places we will find our greatest light?
Anything That We Wanted to Be plays at Summerhall's Cairns Lecture Theatre at Edinburgh Fringe through August 27. Below, see photos from the show.
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
Adam Lenson in Anything That We Wanted to Be
