Messianic Moments And Cosmic Conversations - Review
My review of Barbara Heller's Fringe show
I am a certified Edinburgh Fringe Scrooge. Repeatedly boarding buses that take forty-five minutes to grind down Princes Street amidst the crowds and extra traffic the festival brings will make you that way. As will not being able to walk eight feet without seeing a poster of a gurning drag queen.
I wasn’t planning on seeing anything this year but some women in an online group I’m in were talking about a one-women show they were attending on Thursday evening. By coincidence the women performing the show - Barbara Heller commented on one of my Substacks and invited me to see her show. It felt like serendipity so I went along.
The show is entitled Messianic Moments And Cosmic Conversations. In it vlogs of Heller reflecting deeply and authentically on her relationship with God, Judaism and her mission to bring people together in forgiveness and curiosity are interspersed with her playing eight different characters, all female. Some are old, some young, some voted Trump, some refuse to talk to anyone who voted Trump, some use pronouns in their social media, others do not. All have compelling and insightful monologues on their complex relationship with God and forgiveness.
The show lasts a perfect hour and everything is immaculately paced. Natural comedy flows from the characters and while all have a hint of caricature, all are staggeringly believable. In a small, black room in St Augustine’s, I was transported at one point to a Costco in the Deep South, listening to the wisdom of an elderly widowed woman on tolerance.
The words cancel culture are not spoken, or if they are, spoken fleetingly, but it’s the theme that runs throughout the show. At the end, Heller (who may I add is also a great singer and songwriter) sings about kindness. My hackles tend to go up now when I hear about ‘kindness’, the word having being used so often against women in attempts to silence or censor them when trying to speak truth. But in Heller’s show, it is, if you will, the ‘other side’ being asked to be kind. To be tolerant and curious. She pulls this off without a trace of sermonising or judgement.
She is currently on tour in various countries. If you are not Edinburgh based, keep your eyes peeled if she ever comes to a town near you and do go see it.
Thanks to Barbara, I am rethinking my Scrooge tendencies towards the fringe. Instead of four ghosts changing my mind, eight brilliant women did.
(More about Barbara’s work can be found at https://www.barbheller.com. We need to support more artists like her!)