REVIEW: Double Take, Broken Box Mime Theater, EdFringe 2026 ★★★★

This show is a welcome respite amidst the madness of Fringe. Broken Box Mime Theatre and Dutch Kills have made a truly gorgeous performance comprised of eight short pieces about life, the planet, and connection.

With classic mime set to beautiful music, they make the audience giggle, cry, and come together. The skill is otherworldly, with precise choreography that shines all the more for it’s silent actors. They truly let the audience dream around them in a serene performance where two mimes become a whole world.

For a classic medium, this is a very modern piece. It touches upon technology, capitalism, climate anxiety, and disconnection with a light and sensitive humour. This last theme is the most profound, evoked through clever symbol and simple story: someone elderly recalling a romantic moment, a lover afraid of the real world and receding into their phone for solace, a dementia sufferer recalling ghosts of a past they can no longer reach. The performance makes clever use of transitions between each story. Moments of human love, and even human disdain, are juxtaposed with the slow journey of a snail to a leaf. At first, this is juxtaposition, but as the show begins to spiral larger and larger in its subject matter, the snail is just doing what comes naturally, like us.

This feels like a real love song to the world, but it does not hesitate to criticise the status quo. The sketches mock the self-absorption we tend to settle into, for instance a sketch set in an office sees the workers wilfully ignorant to rising tidelines. Played for comedy, but the message is clear, this language of movement is universal and effective. We are shown ourselves on this stage, and we are found lacking. The show asks us to do a Double Take and re-imagine the world so we can understand it better, and it was really quite emotional to do so. I witnessed actual tears during one of the sketches, and I daresay I was close to it myself.

These artists are clearly masters of their craft, bringing air to life and conjuring joy from nothing. The pinnacle is the final sketch, a beautiful dance through time and space, all the way from the big bang to us at present. This has some of the most impressive choreography scenes in the show, as they show atoms and DNA and evolution clear as day using only their bodies. We become one with the snail, the planet, and one with each other. In future, it would be lovely to see them approach a longer narrative, seeing what beauty they have created with these short pieces, it would surely be amazing.

I really loved this show. I’ve never wished I was a mime more than when I saw what magic could be created through it. In the modern world, with all of the fake that we wade through daily, this is a real and alive art piece about real people and real emotions. This show is such a tonic for the anxious mind, and any and all will be utterly charmed. Not a word is uttered, and yet this show speaks such volumes you’ll be thinking about it a long time after.

Recommended drink: A soothing cup of tea, mimed of course.

Catch Double Take at Dairy Room at Underbelly, Bristo Square from 5th to 30th August at 13.25 (60mins). Tickets are Available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.