Jemima Foxtrot is a poet and singer presenting her first Edinburgh show on the PBH Free Fringe.
A delightfully kooky, unexpected pleasure which is sure to be a popular gem of 2015’s PBH Free Fringe.
She continues to switch from disarming sincerity to tongue in cheek gags like this throughout the show. The poetry and music merge effortlessly together in a stream of consciousness that it is a delight to get lost in. Her meandering narrative follows her journey on a walk home from work at the end of a bad day, the places and people that she passes the spark for the memories that her words and music conjure up.
Her poetry is characterised by a flow of unlikely images from her unusual imagination, phrases bobbing up from all kind of strange places in her mind ‘Capital has cut my life in two like a grapefruit’, ‘love is like hot wiring a sports car’ but there are more insightful moments as well ‘the fruit seller smiles. He smokes and is kind. I can tell’. The story she tells focuses on simple pleasures, confusing moral dilemmas, love for family and the search for fulfilment. There is pleasure and pain in a deeply personal story, a dreamscape of music and verse interspersed with moments of lucidity ‘we are the grownups now and we are the ones to decide what that means’.
Foxtrot’s voice is pure, deep and incredibly versatile. She jumps around from soul, to folk, to 90s pop and her own writing which often turns from poetry to song half way through a line. Without musical accompaniment there are obviously less polished moments but Foxtrot is unpretentious and these slight flaws are barely noticeable. She has a childish innocence that grows more appealing the longer her performance continues but also occasionally adds a fiery line or two giving her otherwise gentle poetry that extra bite. A delightfully kooky, unexpected pleasure which is sure to be a popular gem of 2015’s PBH Free Fringe.
