Fringe 2024 Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall 5th August Review
“Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life” at theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall - Theatre 2 (Venue 53) is a show that I have been trying to find the time to review for a few years. This show has already won prestigious awards not only at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but other major festivals across the world and, to be honest, I wanted to find out if all the positive feedback I had heard about it was true. It was, this story of tomatoes, banjos and the life of Keith Alessi is as honest a show as you will find anywhere in this year’s Fringe.
Why the title of the show? Well if I tell you that then I to a big degree give too much of Keith’s story away and it is his story and it must ultimately be his words that tell it.
There are no tomatoes on stage, but there are banjos, only a small part of Keith’s closet collection of them, but they are clearly much more than musical instruments to him, they are friends that have helped him navigate through some difficult moments in his life and without them, there would simply be no story to tell and no show.
Keith has a love of traditional banjo music, and is the first person to admit that even now he classifies his skill level on the instrument as intermediate. What is important here is the message that you do not have to become the best banjo player in the room to get pleasure from music and to discover its therapeutic properties.
This show is about many things, but perhaps the most important ones are the roads that you have to travel in your life. Some of those roads are choices that you take, but there are always consequences somewhere along that road, nothing is for free in life. Some of those roads though are not choices that you would want to consciously make, not roads that you would choose voluntarily to travel, but when you find yourself on such a road, you have no choice but to keep walking one foot at a time towards whatever destination is at the end. The other important message from this story is to always find the time to tell the people that are really important to you how much you love them while you still have the opportunity to do so.
Keith is a natural storyteller, and humour is a large part of his easy-going delivery style as a narrator. Even when there are tough moments in this story, humour and a lack of any self-pity, a belief that you just keep positive and going forward, “always looking through the windscreen and not the rear view mirror” as Keith says, is vital to your personal outlook on life.
There are leaflets on every chair as you go into this show. Please make sure that you pick one up and read it as this show is about so much more than tomatoes, banjos and even Keith Alessi himself.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Why the title of the show? Well if I tell you that then I to a big degree give too much of Keith’s story away and it is his story and it must ultimately be his words that tell it.
There are no tomatoes on stage, but there are banjos, only a small part of Keith’s closet collection of them, but they are clearly much more than musical instruments to him, they are friends that have helped him navigate through some difficult moments in his life and without them, there would simply be no story to tell and no show.
Keith has a love of traditional banjo music, and is the first person to admit that even now he classifies his skill level on the instrument as intermediate. What is important here is the message that you do not have to become the best banjo player in the room to get pleasure from music and to discover its therapeutic properties.
This show is about many things, but perhaps the most important ones are the roads that you have to travel in your life. Some of those roads are choices that you take, but there are always consequences somewhere along that road, nothing is for free in life. Some of those roads though are not choices that you would want to consciously make, not roads that you would choose voluntarily to travel, but when you find yourself on such a road, you have no choice but to keep walking one foot at a time towards whatever destination is at the end. The other important message from this story is to always find the time to tell the people that are really important to you how much you love them while you still have the opportunity to do so.
Keith is a natural storyteller, and humour is a large part of his easy-going delivery style as a narrator. Even when there are tough moments in this story, humour and a lack of any self-pity, a belief that you just keep positive and going forward, “always looking through the windscreen and not the rear view mirror” as Keith says, is vital to your personal outlook on life.
There are leaflets on every chair as you go into this show. Please make sure that you pick one up and read it as this show is about so much more than tomatoes, banjos and even Keith Alessi himself.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com