Summerhall, Edinburgh
Four stars
Cassie Workman comes not to praise Kurt Cobain in her hour-long meditation on the life and premature death of the driving force behind Nirvana who became the doomed messiah of 1990s disaffected youth. Nor does the Australian comedian and writer come to bury her idol, even as he rises up to haunt her again and again.
As she draws her audience in close to confess all about her pilgrimage to the industrial Washington city where Cobain grew up - or maybe didn’t – Workman digs beyond the acquired mythology that still surrounds Cobain, as well as her own hero worship. For Workman, then, like every other outsider fan who lost their guru and found their own sense of self, this is personal.
As she paces around the small rug that becomes her stage, Workman looks assorted audience members in the eye. Surrounded by them on four sides, she lays bare her epic tale in rhyming couplets. The effect of the eventual catharsis that follows sits somewhere between Greek tragedy and Charles Dickens gothic.
First seen in Edinburgh at the 2022 Festival Fringe, the show has grown into itself considerably since then. As Workman confides in her audience, the nuances of each couplet varies in tone. Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, there is humour too. The Gilbert and Sullivan riff early on is a doozy.
Workman’s revival fits well in Summerhall, which sits a mere stone’s throw from the Southern Bar on South Clerk Street. It was at this local boozer back in 1991 that Cobain and Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl played an impromptu acoustic set at an Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital benefit gig following their gig at Calton Studios. Like Workman’s protagonist, that gig has become legend.
Cobain may have become immortal, but Aberdeen goes beyond hagiography to become an oddly life affirming testament to the power that comes from laying old ghosts to rest and learning to live beyond them.
The Herald, January 13th 2023
ends
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