Above the Mealy-mouthed Sea @ Underbelly Cowgate

Childhood holidays by the sea, days spent swimming, catching fish, eating chips. Seaside nostalgia is the essence of Jemima Foxtrot’s one-woman show, Above the Mealy-mouthed Sea, which makes extensive use of a loop machine. The cadence of the show will come as little surprise to those who know the lead for her musically-infused spoken word poetry. 

This, though, is something different – Foxtrot carefully stitches together elements of wordsmithery, looped poems, storytelling, jokes and theatre into a captivating seascape. And there's more bubbling beneath the sea than might be apparent at first. Jemima digs up a troubling crux from her past, in what, strikingly, could be an autobiographical account.

Director and co-writer Lucy Allan has done much with very little too, using shimmering reflections, a pile of sand, and some cutouts to create scenes that are dreamy, sparse and haunting. 

The narrative hinges upon a single joke and a stop-start style that is rehashed and replayed many times over, as elements are added and the tone and meaning is flipped, reworked and reinterpreted. At an hour long it feels over-laboured, but it nonetheless a playful piece of poignant performance poetry.   

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Above the Mealy-mouthed Sea, Underbelly Cowgate, until Aug 27 (not Aug 16), 2pm, £8-9