REVIEW: Of Fire and Flame, Lily Edwards and Emma Zetterberg, EdFringe 2025 ★★★★

Brooding eternal fae. Daggers. Leather corsets. Seers in dark, mysterious forests. Come join our protagonist Anne as she sets off in a daring journey through Callythia, one full of love, longing and every single fantasy romance trope ever put to the page – at least, that’s the plan, if only her real life pain would stop getting in the way…

There is a viral comedy short called The Lead In Every Romantasy Book, uploaded to the United Citizens Brigade ‘CharactersWelcome’ YouTube channel in May 2025 and currently enjoying over 227,000 views and 17,000 likes. If you’re one of those people who enjoyed that five minute sketch video, you’re going to adore this quick witted, cleverly constructed hour of theatre from Lily Edwards and Emma Zetterberg. From the moment audience are invited into the Gilded Balloon theatre with a soundtrack full of Heard-It-On-BookTok songs and even the Twilight “uh-ah uh-ah uh-ah haaaa” – if you know, you know – it’s clear that Of Fire and Flame is a teasing love letter to all things romantasy. No trope is safe from Edwards’s unnervingly accurate re-enactments, with her onstage depictions of tired bodily descriptions like, “I gulp – gulp!”, “I kick myself for putting my friends at risk…ow” and “he snarls with desire…raar”, proving particularly hilarious. 

Overly used writing conventions are also speared with the same wry humour. “I summon all of my magical magic”, “I ignore the 474 years age difference, it’s fine”, “I smell…DANGER”, “it’s dagger time” and of course, “I slam into something, no wait, someone…” are all lines delivered with such committed melodrama that audience members will feel transported directly into the pages of whichever middling-quality fantasy series personally consumed their every waking hour between the ages of fourteen to seventeen.

The romantasy onstage plot-line climaxes (ahem) with the inevitable two people, one bed scene which must arrive in all self respecting enemies-to-lovers stories, and the feral joy with which Edwards celebrates this inevitable plot point onstage – “pew pew pew! F*ck yeah! Yes! We got there! We made it!” is relatable to anyone who has ever stayed up reading a slightly bad fantasy novel in their bedroom till 3am to get to that inn scene. (This reviewer, naturally, has no personal knowledge of such behaviour.)

The real heart of this story, however, is the ‘real-life’ plot line centring around our main character, Anne. Anne is using her imaginative fantasy world and pretend hot fae boyfriend to escape from the very real problem in her real life: her period won’t stop, it’s been months, and her dozens of trips to the doctors have simply led to endless useless appointments and inaccurate diagnoses.  She’s at breaking point, and can’t even manage to get out of bed to try to do something about it. Much easier to sink into a maladaptive daydream, and try to forget anything else exists. Living in the here and now is, increasingly, just too painful. 

The tension between the fictional comedy world of Callythia and the real-world horrors of Anne’s increasing agony builds throughout the show, Anne finding it harder and harder to access her fictional universe – or to then leave it again, her own daydreams sucking her in. The use of lighting in showing these two states of Anne’s fractured existence is particularly well done, the dreamy blues and purples of Callythia dragging our protagonist into forests and knife fights, and the harsh white yellow glare of hospital strip lights snapping her out into her own disintegrating reality. 

Lily Edwards embodies an impressive number of different characters onstage, all of whom are differentiated from one another only by physicality, physical placing in the space and/or voice acting, and sometimes the dual dialogue between Anne and her flatmate Lena was a little hard to follow due to both characters being embodied by only one person. By the mid point of the show, however, this character work has fully settled and the audience is fully engaged with both storylines. Of Fire and Flame is a show which hooks you in with the romantasy humour, but it is the quiet heartbreaks, relentless pain and cautious hope of Anne’s real life which will stay with you long after you leave Callythia behind. 

Recommended Drink: A hearty tankard of ale, ideally drunk whilst huddled in a cloak which once belonged to your tragically dead mother as you sit beside a fire eating a hunk of homemade bread and some tasty cheese. Extra points if someone has a lyre.

You can catch Of Fire and Flame at Blether @ Gilded Balloon Patter House between now and 24th August at 12:20 (60 mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.