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Aftertaste

 
Nicholas Abrams Review by Nicholas Abrams 3 Published: 27 Jul 2025 Studio, Gala Theatre Show Dates: 26 Jul 2025-27 Jul 2025

Just before Aftertaste, I found myself in a café with two hardened Fringe veterans, chewing over the now-endless inflation of star ratings. Once upon a time, three stars meant, simply, “good – go see it”. These days anything shy of four is met with a polite grimace and the whiff of failure. Keep that in mind, because Aftertaste is a solid three-star show in the old-school sense: engaging, occasionally incisive, but rough round the edges and proudly uninterested in tidy conclusions.

There’s a sharper, keener play buried under the clutter – trim the pauses, trust the dialogue, and it might yet emerge

Juniper (heartbroken, wine-sodden, aggressively sardonic) is ricocheting through dating apps and one-night stands with the determination of a lab rat in a maze. Her best friend Mads – the sort of person who brings orange juice and tarot cards while offering unsolicited life advice – lets herself into the flat on a regular nutrition-and-nurture patrol. Around Juniper orbits a succession of men who look so uncannily alike that, until curtain call, I assumed a single über-versatile actor was hopping costumes. Discovering there were three felt like the show’s final punchline.

The studio set is littered with bottles, books and emotional detritus. It’s authentically chaotic, though perhaps too literally so: several scenes devolve into careful obstacle courses as the cast thread themselves between props. The same literalism afflicts the pacing. Long, naturalistic pauses – to pour wine, fetch Scrabble boards, stare moodily at the middle distance – tip past vérité into inertia. A little underscoring, or even a decisive lighting cue, might have helped the air move.

Speaking of tech, the only sound we hear is during scene changes, accompanied by a brief wash of violet lights. It’s a curious choice: for a play so interested in the throb of life after hours, the silence feels positively monastic. The effect is heightened by a script that, when it stirs, has a wickedly dry tongue. “Is it better to objectify women or to bore them?” Juniper asks, and the line keeps echoing long after the laugh has faded.

Narratively, the play circles rather than travels. We begin with Juniper curled under a duvet; after an hour of awkward dates, fleeting hook-ups and well-meaning pep talks, we end in almost the same position. Slice-of-life drama is allowed to resist neat arcs, but theatre can still gift us momentum – here, the promise of commentary never quite becomes more than gesture.

Yet – crucially – Aftertaste is not boring. It has voice, perspective, and flashes of honest pathos. When Juniper drops the armour for a moment of scared vulnerability, the temperature in the room shifts. There’s a sharper, keener play buried under the clutter; trim the pauses, trust the dialogue, and develop the narrative arc, and it might yet emerge.

Until then, consider this a recommendation in its original three-star spirit: a good hour, imperfect but worthwhile, and proof that “not boring” is still a perfectly respectable bar to clear at the Fringe.

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The Blurb:

Following her recent breakup, Juniper lives alone in the city, spending her wine-fuelled evenings pouring her heart out to strangers she meets at night. Sharp, sardonic and perhaps slightly too sceptical, she searches for what it means to be in love. Her patronising (but well-meaning) best friend - the yoga-loving, herbal tea-drinking and the exact opposite Juniper - is there to pick up the pieces, and to offer words of advice - whether wanted or not.