Image: Chloe Hashemi
What was the original idea, moment or experience that made you create this piece?
The first spark was my love of celebrating women’s voices. Most of my shows have allowed me to put extraordinary women side by side, voices that would never normally share a stage. Then someone asked, “What if you chose just one artist that everybody loves?” Elton felt immediate. He has soundtracked my whole life, and his catalogue is so generous: funny, flamboyant, heartbreaking and musically bulletproof.
So the question became: what if some of the greatest female artists in the world got their hands on Elton John’s songbook? My brilliant musical director, Matthew Floyd Jones, and I started trying different combinations, and it became very addictive, very quickly. Suddenly Britney Spears was singing Bennie and the Jets, Kate Bush was wandering down Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and there was no going back.
2. What can audiences expect when they step into this world?
One woman, 35 divas and an extremely busy larynx.
It’s part concert, part comedy and part love letter to Elton. There are powerhouse vocals, impressions, brilliantly clever arrangements and a few moments where the audience gets to make some important decisions. Barbra Streisand, Britney Spears, Kate Bush, Amy Winehouse, Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga all turn up. Some are living, some are dead and some are occasionally unhinged.
It’s joyful, camp and full of energy, but it isn’t a parody of Elton. The music is treated with real love. One minute it’s completely ridiculous, the next it’s unexpectedly moving, and then we’re all belting out an enormous anthem together.
3. The Edinburgh Fringe is a place where artists and audiences come together from across the world. Why is this the right place for this show?
Edinburgh audiences are wonderfully willing to embrace an idea that sounds slightly deranged when you explain it in one sentence. You can say, “I’m performing Elton John’s greatest hits as 35 different women,” and instead of backing away slowly, they lean in.
It’s also where this show first properly found its audience. Every performance has helped me understand what people want more of, where the heart of the show lies and which moments bring a room together.
Elton’s music is a shared language across generations, nationalities and identities, which feels very Fringe. A lifelong Elton fan can sit beside someone who knows him through Dua Lipa, and they both recognise those songs. The Fringe gives artists permission to experiment, and audiences tell you, in wonderfully immediate terms, whether the experiment has worked.
4. What is something about the show that the audience might not immediately notice, but you hope they discover?
I hope they discover how carefully the voices and songs have been matched. At first, it might look like glamorous vocal chaos, but the choices aren’t simply about which impression I can show off. Each voice has to unlock something new in the lyrics.
Billie Holiday singing Rocket Man becomes smoky, lonely and poignant. Billie Eilish singing Candle in the Wind mashed up with What Was I Made For? from the Barbie movie is surprisingly intimate and moving. Hearing these huge Elton songs through women’s voices can also alter where the power, vulnerability and humour sit.
The comedy allows people to drop their guard. Then the song sneaks up on them. That’s really the hidden engine of the show.
5. What has surprised you most about creating this piece?
I’ve been surprised by how emotional it became, and by how completely like me it feels.
I thought I was making a gloriously silly, camp night out. And I did, happily! But Elton and Bernie Taupin’s songs refuse to be reduced to just jokes. The melodies and lyrics have enormous emotional muscle, and some of the quieter moments land just as strongly as the big, ridiculous ones.
On a personal level, I spent a long time thinking that moving forward meant reinventing myself. This show came from following joy and fun and play, rather than strategy, and it has become the work I’m proudest of. Apparently, the radical reinvention was simply becoming more myself.
6. When your audience walks home, what would you love them to still be talking about?
I hope they’re arguing about which diva was their favourite, rediscovering a song they thought they already knew and saying, “I really wasn’t expecting that to make me feel like that.” Ideally, they’ll also be singing I’m Still Standing far too loudly on the way home.
More than anything, I want them to feel lighter. The world gives us plenty of reasons to brace ourselves, and I don’t think an hour in which strangers laugh, sing and feel big things together is frivolous. I want the show to wrap people in a little bubble of joy. I hope they carry some of it home with them.
Jess Robinson: Elton Reimagined
Assembly George Square Gardens, Piccolo
19.10
5-30 Aug