Nan, Me and Barbara Pravi

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If there is one thing Darkchat like as much as the Edinburgh festival it is Eurovision. Looking for some crossover Darkchatter Carl put Eurovision into the Ed Fringe search engine and came up with just one listing, Nan, Me and Barbara Pravi, so here we are.

Unknowningly amongst my first fifteen shows at this year's fringe I picked five one person shows dealing with the problems of being a gay person in the modern world. This was the best.

This is Hannah Maxwell's own story about how she has spent the last couple of years being the career for her grandmother since her grandfather died. Darkchatters David and Anne are in our 60s and are fortunate to still have three living parents so we know all about the problems around keeping control of all the various pills they have to take. It was therefore quite apt that I was called onto the stage to try and sort them out into the required containers. Unfortunately, because I am colour blind my choices were poor so I think I may have killed her grandmother!

We are also well familiar with trying to find something on television you can watch together with them that everyone can enjoy and help to pass the time. We were well aware of the 2021 contest, won by Italy with France as runners up. As a carer it is vital to keep your own identity so it was totally believable that she could get so obsessed by the titular French contestant that she virtually stalked her.

Hannah Maxwell is such a likeable performer that you are on her side throughout the ups and downs of the show. She avoids the pitfalls of being mawkish or melodramatic and tells the story in a totally believable and relatable way. In lesser hands the storyline could have been bleak in lesser hands but there is so much fun in the telling with the perfect ending that you do leave the venue feeling that you have just seen something life-affirming.

As someone who had the good fortune to attend all three live shows at this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool it was great to see a show where Eurovision was seen as something positive.

I absolutely loved the show and highly recommend it to anyone who likes top quality storytelling and performance. You will laugh, you will cry. You will be glad you are alive.

Nan. Me and Barbara Pravi is on at Summerhall until August 27th (not 21st)

Tickets available here