Oli Fuller
An excellently executed merge of world, where a night out at the club meets theatre.
Club NVRLND leads you into a club night, spending the night celebrating as the lost boys on Peter Pan’s 30th birthday, but as Wendy returns 12 years after seeing Peter, and Hook’s rival club comes to collect the bills, everything is thrown into chaos.
The energy inside Club NVRLND is electric, with iconic songs from the 2000s, such as I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! At The Disco and I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry, performed live by the characters. The night is led by Tiger Lily, played by the drag queen Le Fil, as she guides you into the club and around the plot. The performances are totally immersive, with things happening all around you, on moveable platforms, on the balcony, on the stage, amongst the audience, and the bar is open all show with the encouragement to treat this like a night out at the club.
The performances were outstanding and the songs had clearly been chosen to drive the plot forward. It felt as if the songs had been chosen in the same way as you would choose the songs for a jukebox musical, instead of the playlist picked for a club night, and this massively benefitted the piece. The cast absolutely stunned in terms of choreography, choreographed by Ashley Nottingham, with movement that perfectly combines the gogo dancers of a night out and the musical theatre choreo of this immersive piece to create delicious dance throughout.
My main criticism of this piece is that there was the plot was overbearing in the end. As it got later into the night and the crowd just wanted to party, long breaks would happen between songs to cover plot details, with a plot that at times felt so detailed that I struggled to keep track. Around Croc’s entrance I went to the bar to go get a drink, as the piece invites you to do, and upon my return I never truly figured out what was going on after missing just a minute of plot. It felt that there was too many intimate logistics with Peter Pan’s drug issues and the debts owed between Hook and Croc, details which strayed from the traditional Peter Pan story and proved hard to keep track of in an invironment where there is already so much going on.
Despite that, this is an excellent night out in Edinburgh, and was the perfect way to end my Fringe.
Recommended Drink: Pair this with Fairy Dust.
Performances of Club NVRLND have now concluded at EdFringe 2025.
Jake Mace
Lamesha Ruddock
Jasmine Silk
