Tamara Williamson has created an alternative musical, The Break-Up Diet, with video about relationships, filmed in 2020, and now shared on-demand at Edinburgh Fringe via the C ARTS digital platform.
In this award-winning production from Canada, Williamson takes a familiar topic to many, infidelity and betrayal, and gives it a passionate and personal edge. We hear about letters, arguments, and silences.
Storytelling and space, Lyric, raw, realistic. A year in the life, her life, energetic and emotional. This is alternative rock weaved into a spoken monologue. A real-life drama, a 90 minute story from first meeting to marriage disintegration.
Williamson is known mainly as a musician, releasing albums, but also painter and author. The Break-Up Diet is her first play. With 9 songs, it began as an audio production, before being performed in 2018 at Toronto Fringe.
Advised to showcase the show in Edinburgh after wondering how to further sell it, maybe asking a big name to front it, .So Williamson came to Scotland to perform four shows live on stage. And in parallel, this online version is available to see.
The Break-Up Diet is funny as well as heartbreaking, a tale of a relationship of safety and companionship, but no passion or intensity. A suffocating succubus, a son, a soothing sensation. Wanting someone who no longer wants you.
The film inserts are strong in themselves – this could be a feature of film and music without seeing Williamson performing it. There is a lot of potential here for this to fly as a show. I really appreciated the chance to see it online.
That title, The Break-Up Diet? About the weight loss from stress and sadness of letting a marriage collapse, in this case through his infidelity, but it could just as well be hers. Having asides in another voice punctuating the live text and performance is very effective, asides that suggest an inner dialogue or turmoil.
Williamson opens her heart in The Break-Up Diet, but this is no pity party, and the songs are beautifully written throughout this engrossing show.
The Break-Up Diet is playing on-demand at Edinburgh Fringe.
****