Edinburgh Fringe theatre review

It’s little surprise that a show based around a Zumba class is heavy on physicality. 

Amelia Gann shows off all her stage movement skills as she portrays teacher Cathy Campbell and some of her elderly and/or infirm charges in her rural community lessons. Going along the line of oldies doing their various interpretations of a simple step is certainly one of the comic highlights of the hour.

In a solo show that she also wrote (it’ll work wonders for her Spotlight profile) Gann proves herself an engaging and energetic performer, easily able to bring rounded characters to convincing life. 

Our protagonist is all fake smiles and awkward over-laughing as she goes through her sessions on cruise control. She’s not especially tolerant of her students but tries not to expose neither that impatience nor the ever-present disappointment that her ambitions to become a professional dancer have amounted only to this.

Flashbacks take us back to the humiliation of the teenage talent show when she was laughed out of school, and those times she recreated Legs & Co routines from old Top Of The Pops recordings.

A few other personalities are introduced - notably her nemesis Theresa, who once tap-danced in musical theatre and so represents all that Cathy never achieved, and who still wears jazz shoes to Zumba to this day, just to rub it in.

But when the village fete comes around, she sees her opportunity to impress – and to slay the demons of her earlier failures.

It’s a fairly simple tale, (mostly) believable for its modest ambitions and fully-formed personalities. But it is told in the third person, which lends a distance to the narrative, telling us the character’s motives and feelings rather than just showing us. 

Gann doesn’t need such help, for this is an effective showcase for her considerable performance skills, able to maintain a lightweight story and gentle humour on the strength of her presence alone.

• Zumba Gold is at Pleasance Courtyard at 2.15pm today.

Review date: 15 Aug 2021
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance Courtyard