REVIEW: ALTAR, Presented by Extraterrestrial, EdFringe 2025 ★★★★★

Sutton has been planning her wedding day for as long as she can remember, down to the colour of the napkins. What she can’t plan for is the unexpected arrival of Dan, her ex-childhood lover who she knew as a different person, Dana. Their reunion in the shadow of Sutton’s nuptial union reignites a passion in both of them – to explain to one another the people they’ve become, why the lives they expected to have now feel impossible, and to try and tease out the unsaid nothings and everythings in between.

At home in Melbourne (Naarm), this piece has been performed in Abbotsford Convent, a location used for real-life weddings. You needn’t worry, though, the team behind Em Tambree’s Edinburgh new writing debut have lucidly transferred this piece into a tent in George Square Gardens. Rather than lean on gimmicks or tricks, they instead focus on the plot’s tightly-wound drama. Kathryn Yate directs an unforgiving portrayal of growth, intimacy, faith, and deliverance across the hour that is marked with touches of light humour and levity.

Dan sits in the chapel – either waiting for Sutton to bump into them or hiding from the intensity of returning to their conservative country hometown as a different person. As Sutton searches for a moment of rest on her quote-on-quote ‘perfect day’, she instead finds herself drawn back to the person who defined her teenage understanding of intimacy. It’s not immediately clear how much is resolved between these two, and how much Sutton might be hiding in her exceptionally fresh straight-presenting marriage. We’re drawn into this crux from the moment Dan appears from his place within the audience – hiding among us, thrust into the spotlight.

ALTAR doesn’t dally and that is an immense strength. The show is played in real time, as Sutton decides to take an hour out of the most important day of her life to settle old scores, we see Dan unravel a litany of auspicious philosophical musings in an entirely nonchalant way. Dan is now comfortable in themselves – relieved of the suppression of the past, and Sutton still finds herself grounded in the familial, societal, and religious expectations that Dan has fled to realise the personhood they had long sought.

The show often flirts with the intersection of faith and queerness – asking what we can consider to be formative in deciding the shapes our lives will take alongside the existential questions that define our existence. God is in the big and the small – the ideas that we hold onto as given facts don’t always represent how we feel in a moment. Queerness settles both as a concept and a feeling in the untidy in-betweens. Though Sutton believes deeply in the comfort of traditional family life, she can’t remove herself from the connection she had to Dana, and the renewed complex feelings she becomes wrapped up in as she meets Dan. The things that were hidden in their past lives become not just exposed to each other, but laid bare to the world.

Electric performances from Evie Korver’s Sutton and Eddie Pattison’s Dan carry us through this plot – staged starkly and simply. A church pew sits directly opposite our audience seating, with a few beer cans the only other on-stage props. Korver and Pattison use the venue’s intimate setting to full advantage, leaping around in an argumentative sequence and lobbing Sutton’s wedding shoes across the stage with fervour. The intimacy gives way to an immense attachment to both characters, who struggle to reconcile their pasts with their presents, and their feelings with their realities.

Korver’s graceful presentation of Sutton eventually gives way to unexpected depth. Prim, proper, and neat – Sutton dissolves into a fizz as she discusses the intricacies of careerism, science, faith, and love with her former lover. Pattison’s Dan gives smugness with little reprieve at the beginning of the show, which later quakes into queer rage against the boxes they were put into as a young person, and the violence they faced.

ALTAR is bookended by a fabulously subtle sound design that evokes Christian ritual amongst rich melodies that occasionally punctuate the definitive, angst-filled outbursts between the pair. While the tech remains simplistic, it highlights unforgettable and cherished performances from the show’s central duo.

In a world that seeks to reduce trans identities to labels, ALTAR asks us to remember that the cis world is one full of constraint, and that though the trans experience may often come across as messy, authenticity is rarely achieved in tidy confines. Vulnerable, intimate, smart and sweet – ALTAR tests what it means to stray from how deeply you can think, and asks how deeply you can feel.

Recommended Drink: Join Dan with a can of Tennents, paired with your only occasional dose of nicotine.

You can catch ALTAR until August 25th (not the 6th, 12th, or 19th) at The Wee Coo at Underbelly, George Square from 14:50 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.