GRIMM AF
Venue: Assembly George Square
Date: Friday 14th August
Reviewed by: Eileen Inglis
Rating: ★★★ 3/5
Big voices, big performances and some very silly fairytales make GRIMM AF an entertaining hour with plenty of laughs and a few misses.
What happens when the characters from our childhood fairytales find themselves living in a world of fake news, tech bros and Amazon warehouses?
Welcome to GRIMM AF, where the central villain is GRIMM News, a fake news platform that controls public perception and decides who’s good, who’s bad and whose story gets believed.
The show gets off to a strong start with one of its best songs, as a tech bro gets married in a ridiculously extravagant wedding. Huge amounts of money are being spent to make everything look spectacular (for social media, of course), with little thought for the staff or environmental impact, while the happy couple are so perfectly matched, he’s excited that he’s essentially marrying a clone of himself.
There’s plenty of satire underneath the silliness. Jeffrey Epstein and Amazon are targets throughout, while familiar fairytale characters are given some strange modern problems. Humpty Dumpty quite literally leaks under pressure, Stepmother has some intimate questions about Rapunzel’s hair growth, and the Hamazon factory is, inevitably, full of bottles of pee.
The songs are one of the strongest parts of the show. They’re catchy, funny and clever, whether it’s Wolf pleading with the audience to “hate me for the right reasons”, or a 400-year-old Rumpelstiltskin singing about his concerning hopes for fatherhood in Skin Baby.
But it’s the cast of six who really make GRIMM AF work. They’re excellent singers and actors, and at times it feels like watching a Broadway musical cast let loose. They commit completely to the ridiculousness, and without performers this good, some of the material might fall a bit flat.
It doesn’t all land, and some bits work better than others. The strongest moments are when the silliness is combined with some genuinely clever satire.
Then again, sometimes something can just be very silly and very funny. One of my biggest laughs comes right at the end, when a dejected Big Bad Wolf remembers what he’s good at and huffs, puffs and blows Rumpelstiltskin straight off the stage.
GRIMM AF is funny, energetic and performed by a seriously talented cast. Not every joke hits, but enough do to make this twisted trip through the fairytale world an entertaining hour.
★★★
