Words: Trudy Lynn 
Image: Manja Williams

3 Stars 

It’s hard to categorise Forgive Me. It’s part one-woman theatre, part pole, part gaming. Add to that some songs and video projections with which the performer interacts. It fits the Edinburgh Fringe well, especially the theme of ADHD; it tries to do everything at once.  

Tasmin Shasha, the writer and performer, leads us through her fights with her son Troy over his constant playing of video games. During the course of the play (/dance piece?), she resists and then accepts his autism diagnosis and her own ADHD  diagnosis. It’s touching when she learns that diagnostic labels can help them adapt  to each other. It feels real (and is autobiographical) for anyone who wants a slice of contemporary parenthood interspersed with swimming pole routines interrupted by  phone calls and some fun video gimmicks. 

There are lots of props which successfully add to the intensity of Tasmin’s mental  chaos and the interaction with the projection works well, particularly in the gaming  sequences. The sound mixing made hearing the lyrics to the few songs a little  difficult and the flats weren’t perfectly placed for the projection. It feels more gimmicky than detail-orientated and I wonder if that’s on purpose to reflect the ADHD mind. But given the themes, we’d expect a neurodiverse audience, and so I’d appreciate surtitles for those songs and more of an attempt at neurodiverse access. 

I imagine this is a good hard-hitting performance for parents of neurodiverse children  to help them understand. The audience did enjoy it. Being fairly well-versed in neurodivergency and pedagogy myself, the take-aways felt quite basic and occasionally trite. 

Forgive Me
13.20
TechCube0 at Summerhall 
6 August – 31 August (not 18; 25)