The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth ⭐⭐⭐
“She’s not crazy – she’s just done her research. On Facebook. At 3am. With a glass of pinot. Meet Sharon Hargreaves: part-time keyboard warrior, full-time flat-Earth believer, forever tumbling down online rabbit holes. When she heads to a flat Earth convention in Vegas, a Shakespearean mix-up sends her spiralling into chaos, conspiracies and unexpected self-discovery. With best mate Debs and a crew of lovable oddballs, Sharon sets out to expose “the truth”. What she finds? Big laughs, bigger tunes and absolutely zero scientific credibility.”
There are few subjects more perfectly suited to musical comedy than the internet convincing people that the Earth is flat. Add a grieving woman, a Vegas convention, a Shakespearean case of mistaken identity and enough conspiracy theories to make your Facebook feed nervous, and you have The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth.
Direction by Karl Steele is good and makes excellent use of the space, ensuring that the action remains visible even when the stage is being populated by multiple characters and rapid-fire storytelling. There is a real sense of fun to the staging, and Steele keeps the production moving at a good pace. The problem is less with the direction itself and more with the amount of material it is being asked to contain. At times, the show is moving so quickly that it feels as though it is desperately trying to get to its next joke, song or plot point before the hour and a half disappears. Choreography is fun and energetic, serving the story well. The movement adds to the heightened musical comedy style without feeling unnecessarily complicated, and the ensemble commits fully to it.
LX is similarly playful and serves the story well. There is plenty of dynamism to it, and it feels as though the lighting team has had fun with the material. It helps the production shift between locations and moods quickly, which is particularly useful in a show that refuses to sit still for very long. Sound is mostly good, but there were occasions where the music overpowered the actors. Unfortunately, when your script is firing jokes at the audience at this speed, missing even one line can mean missing an entire gag. A few moments were therefore lost in the mix, which was a shame because the comedy is one of the show’s strongest assets.
Set is lovely in its simplicity. Five painted boxes and a beautifully painted globe-like circular floor provide the foundations for the whole world. It is a good example of how a Fringe production doesn’t need a huge budget to create something visually effective. The set is transformed through the performers, lighting and choreography rather than constantly asking us to look at the scenery.
Costume is similarly stripped back, which I appreciated. Rather than making everyone look like exaggerated caricatures of their characters, the costumes help ground the people within the ridiculousness of the story. That makes the more heightened moments even funnier because there is still something recognisably human underneath them.
The biggest problem for me comes with the book by Adam Tuffrey and Alexander Moneypenny. There are some very funny ideas here, and I particularly enjoyed the Fringe references. They show an awareness of the environment in which the show is being performed and provide some lovely moments of self-awareness. The problem is that I couldn’t help wondering how sustainable some of those jokes will be if the show continues beyond Edinburgh.
More importantly, there is simply too much happening. Conspiracy theory. Grief. Friendship. Loneliness. Misinformation. Flat Earth. Vegas. Shakespeare. Adele. Online communities. Identity. Belonging. Family. A road trip. And plenty of jokes in between. That is a lot to ask an audience to process in an hour and thirty minutes. The result is a show where several ideas are introduced which could have formed the basis of genuinely fascinating character development, only for the production to quickly move on to the next gag. Sharon’s central journey is particularly interesting, but there isn’t quite enough time to make us care about every stage of it.
There is also a reliance on shock humour that occasionally feels like an easy route to a laugh. It works in the moment, but if this show is going to develop into a full-length musical, I think it will need to find more ways of generating comedy from the characters and situations rather than relying so heavily on the shock of the joke itself. Because underneath all of this, there is a really good musical trying to get out. The themes are surprisingly relevant. The idea of people turning to conspiracy theories because they are looking for community, belonging or an explanation for a world that feels increasingly difficult to understand is genuinely interesting. The production itself acknowledges that this isn’t really about whether someone believes the Earth is flat. It is about why people believe things in the first place. The trouble is that the time constraints doesn’t give that idea enough room to breathe.
Music and lyrics by Adam Tuffrey and Alexander Moneypenny suffer from a similar issue. There are some catchy numbers here, with a nice mixture of upbeat ensemble material and more heartfelt moments. The score certainly knows how to deliver a musical comedy tune, and there are moments where the songs feel like they could grow into something much bigger.
But, again, there are simply too many ideas competing for space. I often found myself enjoying a song and then wishing the show had allowed it to develop further before moving on. The material feels like it is already pointing towards a two-act version, and I suspect that is where some of these songs and relationships will really find their feet.
The performances from Emma Norman, Emma Thornett, Michael Joseph, Tom Dickerson and Leonie Wall are all good, with the entire company working extremely hard. Emma Norman gives Sharon plenty of warmth and makes the character easy to root for, even when her beliefs become increasingly questionable. The problem with Sharon’s storyline isn’t Norman’s performance; it is that the material doesn’t quite give her enough time to make us fully invest in the journey.
Emma Thornett brings excellent comic timing to Debs and has a lovely chemistry with Norman. Michael Joseph handles his various roles well, while Tom Dickerson and Leonie Wall are particularly strong when multi-roling. In fact, the multi-roling is one of the highlights of the entire production. Watching the performers switch between characters with such speed and commitment is hugely entertaining.
Leonie Wall in particular gets some wonderfully ridiculous material, while Tom Dickerson has an infectious energy that makes his appearances consistently funny. This is a talented company doing an awful lot with very little, and their commitment is never in doubt.
The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth is a musical with a good heart, some very funny jokes and a premise that is impossible not to find amusing. But it is also a show that desperately needs to decide what it wants to be when it grows up. At the moment, it feels like a two-act musical trying to disguise itself as a 90-minute Fringe show.
There is a genuinely interesting story about grief, loneliness, misinformation and belonging buried underneath all the flat-Earth jokes. I just wanted more of it. More character. More emotional development. More time for the songs to breathe. And perhaps slightly fewer ideas being thrown at us at the speed of a conspiracy theorist discovering a new YouTube channel. Still, there is plenty here to enjoy. The cast are committed, the staging is energetic and the show has enough laughs to make for a thoroughly entertaining hour. The Earth may be round. This musical, however, still has a few corners that need smoothing out.
The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth plays at the Pleasance Queen Dome from the 5–30th at 2:05pm with a run time of 90 minutes.
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