Cabaret Festival. The Space. 13 June 2025
Writers don’t always deliver in the live performance stakes, but Demi Adejuyigbe manages to do so in what is at once rambling and seemingly chaotic while being so tightly scripted that little of its topicality was available for change.
A staff writer for The Good Place, and myriad internet comedy skits and parody theme songs, Adejuyigbe developed this show for the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe with the assistance of directors BriTANick (Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher), writers for Saturday Night Live and also internet comedy skits.
He begins by telling us what is behind the backflip; he has a crush and she gets excited about backflips so, one backflip coming up. When she finally arrives that is, as she’s currently at a celebrity party that he wasn’t invited to. There then ensues a running commentary on said party, accentuated by staged phone calls, repartee with his producer and finally a most amusing mondegreen on the party song de jour, Islands In The Stream.
Adejuyigbe has developed a list of ways to ensure your crush will be impressed, and while he waits for his to turn up, he shares these foolproof methods with us. Through the use of various technologies, he explains his techniques through song, a bit of dance, and visuals.
He’s a very good writer, and he utilises assonance and oblique rhyming with some skill, evidenced in his opener. Being topical is right up in the ‘impressing crushes’ stakes, so he rewrites Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire with contemporary references. He does manage to get in a local (Australian) reference here with the mention of ‘mushrooms’, but then again, that case is almost as much an internet sensation as he is.
That attempt at familiarity doesn’t really continue, and it’s to his detriment in a number of places as scripted references fly over the audience’s heads and are rewarded with only polite chuckles.
The production is interrupted by a series of scripted phone calls, apparently from the afore mentioned celebrity party, where again unfamiliar names and places detract from the humour of the piece. While he does acknowledge this in the most charming way, one still wonders why it was too much trouble to remove some of the more obscure American references.
The mini rock opera The Ikea Monkey is a case in point. An incident apparently famous in North America (it occurred in Canada, which is not the 51st state) was politely received and it was fortunate that much of his patter was entertaining enough to get through this quite long section of the show. Adejuyigbe’s casual delivery is in opposition to some of the rigid content, but suicidal robots, racism and the reveal of his girlfriend’s identity all add to the entertainment.
The show almost twist on its head as it comes to the conclusion. Like a character in search of an author, Adejuyigbe delivers a monologue that reveals a tragic sad clown figure, a man looking for acceptance through humour. It’s quite jarring and even though we know we have the physical backflip yet to come, this emotional backflip is quite dampening, and even though it exits on a funny line, we never quite regain the mood. And perhaps that’s how it’s meant to be.
And the physical backflip? Does he get the girl? Adejuyigbe rips off his overalls, revealing his gym shorts and then…
…but that would be telling.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 13 to 14 Jun
Where: The Space
Bookings: Closed
