Rachel Fairburn: Side-Eye

Edinburgh Fringe – Monkey Barrel

It’s hard to know what to expect from character comedy, but there’s something about Rachel Fairburn’s Side-Eye that is just really satisfying to watch. Maybe it’s the gossip, maybe it’s the drama, maybe it’s just watching some terrible people be terrible, who knows, but Fairburn’s writing and development of these characters is exquisite. 

Side-Eye follows the lives of 7 people, whose lives are intertwined and connected within the overarching narrative. The storyline is multi-layered and the details and call-backs that emerge as the show progresses gives us a better understanding as the passive spectator whilst the character’s soap opera unfolds. It’s like watching animals in the zoo; we’re removed and all we can do is watch the drama unfold, we can’t look away from it. We just have to keep watching to see what happens.

“It’s so unbelievably clever that just watching the show and seeing the puzzle pieces fit together generates a lot of excitement.”

Fairburn has created these foils that exist only to clash with one another, to contrast and highlight each other’s parallel characteristics.  Each character is presented to us through a monologue as if they were being interviewed in some informal way, but as if the only way that they could answer was through this stream of consciousness. This raises a few questions for us, mostly about how honest are they being in this moment; are they telling us the truth as things are, or are they manipulating their language to try to come off better? And it really depends on our relation to them in that moment, which Fairburn has clearly taken into account in her exploration of the idea of perception vs reality using these 7 people. The Devil spells it out for us as the end, but Fairburn has written this show where we are constantly given clues that are enough so that we can draw conclusions about the true nature of these people ourselves. As far as we can tell, they’re all unreliable narrators and Fairburn uses that fact to mine each character presentation for all of their comedic potential. 

From all the characters, the Devil might just be the most anti-climactic. The Hobbesian conclusion/ summation that this character gives us just confirms what we’ve kind of already worked out for ourselves minus the moralizing on the idea of the social contract. Side-Eye is fun in itself to watch, purely for the drama. It could be more than that, but it doesn’t really need to. The structure comes from the change between characters, and because it’s in the stream of consciousness style, making it anything more might be a disservice to the show. Intellectually interesting perhaps, but also unnecessary. It’s brilliant and stronger without one. 

The drama that these people are involved in is addictive, and it is due to both Fairburn’s writing and performance. She really becomes these characters in all of their terribleness, completely transforming from one to the next. All that we have to go on initially is the accessory that Fairburn has chosen to symbolise a particular individual, and in choosing and putting on a particular hairband, she becomes that person completely. There is a noticeable shift not only in accent, but in posture, micro-expressions, tone, sentence structure, and word choice. These characters are modern-day archetypes in themselves, and Fairburn has carefully built them up to the point where they seem real. Because these archetypes have been developed so well, it appears that in doing so, Fairburn has pushed each one the furthest that they can go in terms of comedy potential and personality.

This show is a beautiful example of character comedy, how stories and characters can be weaved together into a thoroughly enjoyable hour. Side-Eye feeds whatever demons, gremlins or goblins that we possess that live for exactly the story that Fairburn tells in this hour. Fairburn’s work is just spectacular and the care with which she has built this hour really shows in her execution of each individual character. It’s so unbelievably clever that just watching the show and seeing the puzzle pieces fit together generates a lot of excitement.

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

Photo Credit: Drew Forsyth