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Auntie Empire

Summerhall, Edinburgh

Three stars

 

Auntie Empire has something to say. As writer/performer Julia Taudevin’s creation holds court over a soundtrack of couthy Scottish classics, the audience enter to become both her subjects and a very, very, very extended family. The address that follows sees Auntie prepare to give her last will and testament as she slowly falls apart along with the last fetid gasps of British imperialism.

 

Taudevin’s new solo show premiered as part of the Manipulate festival this weekend after assorted showcases over the last few years. Clad in prosthetically enhanced twin set and joke shop teeth, Taudevin’s Auntie is the sort of toff so posh you can only understand one in ten words they say. A veneer of respectable authority manifests itself in cups of tea and Tunnock’s teacakes handed out to the audience, some of whom are forced on stage to do her bidding. Gradually, however, Auntie’s hectoring gives way to a bowel busting collapse of power.

 

Under the direction of Tim Licata, Taudevin’s mix of clowning and broad political satire recalls the dramatic trappings of Dario Fo by way of Alfred Jarry’s play, Ubu, which put a similarly bloated monarch in the frame. Here, however, it is as if the entire colonial project is having an almighty prolapse.

 

Auntie’s address to the nation takes place on Fraser Lappin’s garish set laid out like an explosion in a shortbread tin come to kitsch, eye bleeding life. An Anglo-Scots Punch and Judy show, meanwhile, demonstrates as explicitly as puppets can exactly what England’s establishment has been doing to Scotland for centuries.

 

Presented by Disaster Plan, the producing arm of Taudevin and playwright partner Kieran Hurley, who also acts as dramaturg alongside playwright Sara Sharaawi, Taudevin’s hour-long creation has a gloriously tasteless largesse to it that echoes some of the institutional obscenities of real life. While the first night on Sunday was briefly held up after an audience member took ill, Taudevin picked things up in a way that suggests that, while Auntie may be around for a while yet, not even God can save her now.


The Herald, February 10th 2026

 

ends 

 

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