WHAT IF THEY ATE THE BABY?
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★★★★
“The chemistry between the two is electric”
Dottie and Shirley look like they’ve stepped straight out of a 1950s homemaker advert; perfect dresses, perfect hair, and the kind of fixed smiles that make you wonder what they’re hiding.
Fringe First-winners Xhloe and Natasha bring their signature mix of clowning, movement, and dark humour to a story that starts in a spotless kitchen and spirals into something far stranger. Shirley is scrubbing the chess board floor when Dottie drops by to return a casserole dish. They exchange polite, clipped small talk, moving with the mechanical precision of music box dolls. Somewhere upstairs, unseen footsteps creak. We never find out who (or what) they belong to, but we’re instantly on edge at this ominous presence which seems to frighten them both.
The scene plays again. And again. Each time the words are the same, but the mood shifts: warmth melts into desperation, cheerfulness into dread. It’s a masterclass in pacing and control, the pair able to flick from humour to skin-prickling in a heartbeat, the tragi-comedy of the clowning perfectly captured in their delivery.
Between these loops come bursts of stylised movement, transforming everyday gestures into playful, sometimes violent, dance. Contemporary rap beats rub shoulders with nostalgic tunes. At one point they’re on the table, legs entwined, discussing which part of the other they’d eat first. Later they’re kissing with wild abandon. Are they friends, lovers, or something else entirely? The piece never tells you outright, and that mystery is part of the thrill.
The attention to detail is exceptional. Every tilt of the head, every flicker of the eyes, is part of the story. The chemistry between the two is electric, and the trust they share on stage lets them take the audience right to the edge of comedy and fear without losing balance.
Beyond the clowning, it’s clear that both performers are also exceptional actors, managing to convey the underlying subtext that’s progressively creeping under the surface of the dialogue. It’s a brilliantly crafted performance, and retains the superb integrity, slickness and self-awareness that the duo have shown in their other work.
With a neat 50-minute run time, it feels like the piece could benefit from an extra ten minutes or so to go a little deeper, but what they manage in the time is gripping and unsettling. It’s a strange, stylised, surreal take on the role and anxieties of women in America, and despite the 50s setting, it feels disturbingly contemporary; like one of them is having a nightmare that we’ve somehow all got stuck in.
WHAT IF THEY ATE THE BABY?
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Reviewed on 9th August 2025 at Upper Theatre at theSpace @ Niddry St
by Joseph Dunitz
Photography by Molly White
