Come Back Home at Edinburgh Fringe 2026 ★★★½
★★★½ Come Back Home | Summerhall
Fadi Murad’s exploration of grief and memory feels deeply personal – but the broader picture is tantalisingly elusive.
Come Back Home opens with an arresting, shocking image. Fadi, on the receiving end of verbal abuse (via VoiceOver), wets himself. His trousers are soaked through. He stands before you, emotional and exposed.
Next, he is performing three roles at once, twisting from shock through to comedy and back. And now, repetition squeezes the plaintive call for ‘dad’ into a blaring siren. It’s arresting stuff.
Video projection cannily expands the space of Summerhall’s Anatomy Theatre, and Murad makes full use of the physical space too as he proceeds to tell his story of childhood bereavement and learning to cope with loss and the death of innocence (and innocents).
Whilst the storytelling is effective, however – including puppetry and video projection alongside Murad’s physical performance – there’s some intangible disconnect between the individual and the collective which isn’t quite bridged. “Within each moment, the present creates mysteries”, says Murad – and while these personal mysteries are engagingly told, something of the urgent present moment is frustratingly out of reach. Perhaps it’s all just too raw, too painful, too real.
| Access Score ♿♿♿♿ (4/5) 🚧Access notes- Wheelchair accessible, via courtyard. Summerhall is an old building though, and can be congested. ❄️Heat: Comfortable. 💺Seat – Old-fashioned, steeply raked lecture theatre seats with folding wooden benches. Fine for an hour. |
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