REVIEW: We Will Hear the Angels, Magnetic North, EdFringe 2026 ★★★★

Disclaimer: In the spirit of ‘Think Less, Feel More’, what follows is a stream of consciousness to capture the feeling of watching this show. It is therefore an extended piece to suit this expansive form.

Three sad men in blazers are walking around the stage. Two sad women join them. Desks! Instruments!

Five desks. Two guitars. A violin. A cello. A sign on a desk reads: ‘Do Your Work’. Is this a play about productivity? He writes another: ‘Do not go to the window’. I suppose because if he was to look out the window he would see what we do.

A man dancing with a vase of dead flowers, a man making wine glasses sing, a woman peering at herself in a mirror, sewing, a man transcribing a musical composition, sighing,  a woman dancing, drawing, sighing. 

The desks are set with an egg timer, dead flowers, crumpled papers – aha! So this is like a living Vanitas painting. A live memento mori (ironic), a reminder to carpe the diem. So why is everyone so sad? 

The mood is melancholy. A man drops a tin; they all stop what they’re doing and look – I take it they all live in the same building. Or at least, they can hear each other. So five strangers, living separate lives, together. I suppose this makes it a play about SONDER*. 

Louis, played by Daniel Padden in an overcoat, reminds me of the man in that Wim Wenders film – Wings of Desire – watching over the other characters as they speak to him. He takes their portraits one by one, on a modern digital camera that takes sun-faded sepia portraits which develop on the projector screen – how temporally confusing. The real angel here is the sound designer up in the rafters, watching over the performance, keeping everyone seen and heard.

Who are these people? Why are we watching their humdrum lives unfold? Ah, because they are all lonely in love. Unrequited love, unspoken love, a love betrayed, a love unwanted – love with nowhere to go. This is a cabaret for the broken-hearted, written by Nicholas Bone and co-directed with Marissa Zanotti. 

Mia Scott plays her sorrows out on her violin. Why did I quit violin when I was twelve? It is such a beautiful instrument. I should start taking lessons again. Clearly, there are emotions strings can express far better than words.

Dialogue is prerecorded and piped in from above, like internal thoughts or whispers. But not dialogue because no one really talks to each other, only to themselves.

An egg timer, an egg in a cup, an egg shaker. The Surrealists were similarly preoccupied with eggs, there is clearly something that fascinates: the promise of a new beginning, the dawn of heaven and earth in Hindu mythology, a period. As Leonora Carrington put it, ‘The egg is the macrocosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between the Big and the Small which makes it impossible to see the whole’. We Will Hear the Angels deftly pinpoints the small, struggling to find the big. 

All the Gen Z kids in the audience are taking this as an opportunity to nap. Maybe it’s the 4.30pm time slot, maybe it’s the low-lighting and soothing songs. The guy next to me yawns. Someone across from me yawns. Shit – I just yawned.  

Nicholas Bone sings a sad song about being lonely. I love hearing untrained voices sing. A reminder that anyone can sing – we all have a voice. Greg Sinclair graces us with his soul song next – there is a predictable formula here, everything happens in canon.

Mia Scott’s voice is as beautiful as her violin playing. I wonder if she’d give me violin lessons? This is raw and intimate, like watching someone singing alone in their bedroom. I feel I am not watching characters but real people living real lives. 

In the moments when their voices join in shared harmony, the answer to the show’s question is clear: Why do sad songs feel so good? Because sad songs mean sorrow joined, heartache shared, loneliness expressed and in doing so, alleviated.

The use of smartphones disturbs me. They are the only thing that locates this play in the present day. Is it trying to make the point that smartphones are contributing to this lovelorn loneliness? This is a world that otherwise feels firmly in the 20th century, where most of its source material is taken from: Uncle Vanya, Rear Window, Katherine Mansfield’s work. So the whatsapp texts from the woman’s cheating husband feel like a 21st century intrusion into this dream world. 

Apphia Campbell sings to us. Goosebumps. The hairs on my arms stand on end. I adore listening to trained singers sing. If the show can be said to have a message it’s clear: Sing your sorrows! Pizacatto your heart out! Put your pain into your work, and in doing so, you will not feel so alone. 

By the time ‘Spinning Away’ by Brian Eno is played in a stunning arrangement, I’m humming along, I can’t help it. Campbell holds everyone on stage with her voice, there is so much care in her song, I feel held too. We Will Hear the Angels feels as good for me as a gong bath, my body vibrates.

A tender show, for tender hearts – but whatever you do, don’t have a glass of wine beforehand or you may succumb to a Sonderous snooze, where I imagine the dreams are full of angels.

Recommended Drink: Lacrimimosa – A classic brunch cocktail with a twist: orange juice, champagne and a dash of strangers’ tears. 

Catch We Will Hear the Angels at Summerhall between August 6-30 at 16:30 (60 mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.

*Sonder: a noun that describes the profound realization that every random stranger is living a life as vivid, complex, and central to them as your own is to you. Coined in 2012 by American writer John Koenig for ‘The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows’.