“To chronicle the high points of ‘Sardines (A Comedy About Death)’ would be to provide a complete script. It’s all amazing.”
Editorial Rating: 5 Stars ( Outstanding)
Chris Grace has been a part of my EdFringe landscape for over a decade. I was the first reviewer to critique him as Christian Grey in 50 Shades the Musical – “Be assured, Gizmo has been doused and this cultural gremlin has arrived.” There are one or two BIG beasts in the EdFringe wilderness and Chris Grace is one of them – admired by his colleagues, loved by his audiences, applauded and awarded with all the laurels the greatest arts festival in the world can bestow on a favourite son. Chris Grace is practically a venue in his own right. The list of productions in which he’s performing this year makes the mind boggle. Chris Grace gives so much pure joy to so many and yet in the past 10 years The Universe has been downwrong beastly to Edinburgh’s Beloved Bonnie Big Beastie snatching his nearest and dearest like the cyclopes having his tea with Odyseeus’ crew. ‘Sardines’ is our Chris’ reply.
Where some theatre makers would wish for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, Grace has o’erthrown all his charms and what strength he has is his own. Not only is he his own venue, he is his own tech – literally, there are no lighting changes, music, big screens, or projectors. Everything is conjured in the mind’s eye by this wizard of Wow, seriously how does he do that? What Chris has given up and left out in order to better tell the story of what he has lost leaves so much more on stage. Picasso could not have been more pleased with his animal sketches than Chris and his fanbase (me included) should be with the results to be seen on the most demanding and fringiest of stages in the Assembly stable.
The absence effects is eerie, like a covered mirror during Shiva. Clad entirely in white (even his ring), Chris is wearing the colour primarily associated with mourning in Asian cultures but this is a far from sombre show. The next morning, over the breakfast table, Daughter 1.0 asks me how I enjoyed my shows yesterday. I explain that I saw a show about a dear man losing those dearest to him… and… that it was chuffing hilarious. Quick check by her that no legs are being pulled and her jaw drops in the direction of her kippers and marmalade. A scarcely believable thing has been made to happen.
To chronicle the high points of ‘Sardines (A Comedy About Death)’ would be to provide a complete script. It’s all amazing. In the Daoist sense, there are no high points since there are zero, none, nadda, corresponding low points. This is a tour de force by a master craftsman of the art, science, and magic of theatre. The biggest meta laugh is, fittingly, on Chris. The subject of one of his two ultra-dark jokes – the ones darker than the darker shades of a blackhole playing hide-and-seak under a blackout curtain, the gags so dark his family suggested he leave them out – Chris’ late mother, steps into the limelight in the only recorded AV accompaniment in the whole piece. The poem she recorded to music shortly before her passing is a show-stoppingly poignant and urgent message to humanity on the value of a good life well lived. It takes someone with the grace of Chris Grace to share centre stage in his own masterpiece solo show.
Chris never fully reconciled with his late father who could not (or would not) make peace with Chris’ coming out or chosen career path. If I had a son with so much love to give and talent to share, I would crawl over broken glass and rattlesnakes to spend an hour with him. Sadly, this is probably what you are going to have to do in order to get a ticket to this supernova of a show exploding out of the darkness with the biggest of BIG bangs.
Get your coats on and go see this!
Get Your Coats On 
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