EDINBURGH 2023: Review: ANYTHING THAT WE WANTED TO BE, Summerhall

“How much time do you spend worrying about your decisions?” This is a show for anxious people. Theatre-director-who-was-nearly-a-doctor Adam Lenson steps on stage directed by Hannah Moss and delivers a life-affirming piece about the what-ifs we all come across.

Haunted by what could have been and what could still be, he explores his past through the lens of being diagnosed with melanoma in 2019. A cleverly built narrative redefines the concepts of happiness and success, putting things in perspective and attempting to make sense of life itself. 

It’s not quite a musical, not quite a play with music, Anything That We Wanted To Be is its own genre. Heavily confessional but universal in sentiment, its storytelling goes in circular motions, going back and forth from “Day 0”, the day he received his diagnosis. We learn of his tender relationship with his parents and his brother, his love for Tetris, and what it feels like to be a freelance director at parties. He ties physicist Hugh Everett’s theory of the multiverse into his experience in what truly is an intriguing worldview.

Everett said that when we make a choice, the universe splits and all possible outcomes happen in different universes (yes, that’s where most famous multiverse plots come from). Surrounded by wires and old television screens in a set designed by Libby Todd, Lenson uses a loop pedal to accompany his voice.

Catchy tunes spice up the pace and add a multidimensional element to the production, making it a wholesome, big-hearted hug of a show. The moral of the story is: there are no right or wrong choices. See this and rest easy tonight.

Anything That We Wanted To Be runs at Summerhall on the following dates: 6-13, 15-20, 22-27.

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