As Far As We Know at Summerhall Review

There are few things more reassuring at the Fringe than discovering that Sam Ward is back at Summerhall to make you question whether you understand anything at all.

As Far As We Know, the latest from YESYESNONO, begins with holes. A woman wakes up to discover mysterious holes appearing in her garden. Naturally, she attempts to work out what is causing them. Less naturally, this sends her hurtling through cartography, financial speculation, data centres, psychics, bubbles, dictators, crashes and the increasingly concerning fact that everything seems to cost more money than it did five minutes ago.

It is, essentially, a detective story for people who have become suspicious of reality itself.

Ward’s storytelling has that particularly rare quality of making the seemingly straightforward feel progressively more slippery. He speaks directly to us, leading the audience through a strange, hallucinogenic road trip in which every answer seems to produce another, considerably stranger question. The result is funny, unsettling and surprisingly profound.

What begins as an investigation into holes becomes an investigation into our collective inability to understand the world we have built. We live surrounded by algorithms, financial systems, digital infrastructure and incomprehensible political decisions, all of which are supposedly functioning according to some grand logic that nobody can quite explain. As Far As We Know takes that feeling and turns it into theatre.

And it is properly theatrical. Ward’s work has always been interested in the relationship between storyteller and audience, but here that relationship becomes particularly slippery. There is a constant sense that we are being offered information while simultaneously being reminded that information is not necessarily the same thing as truth.

It sounds terribly cerebral. It is. But crucially, it is never dry.

Ward has an almost mischievous ability to make enormous philosophical questions feel ridiculous. One minute you are contemplating the nature of capitalism and human knowledge; the next you are thinking about a hole in someone's garden. It is precisely this collision of the profound and the completely bonkers that makes the show so compelling.

There is also something quietly unnerving about the journey. The world of As Far As We Know feels recognisable enough to be believable, but distorted enough to make you suspicious of everything in it. It captures that peculiar contemporary sensation of constantly receiving more information while understanding less.

YESYESNONO have spent years refining this particular kind of storytelling, and it shows. Ward is an assured performer, but more importantly, he understands the value of letting an audience sit with uncertainty. He doesn't spoon-feed us an answer. He gives us the question, points towards the abyss and lets us decide whether we fancy looking in.

I loved it.

As Far As We Know is strange, funny, unsettling and genuinely thought-provoking — the sort of theatre that sends you back out into Edinburgh looking at ordinary things slightly differently.

Perhaps that is what the best Fringe theatre does: it doesn't explain the world.

It makes you suspicious of it.

As Far As We Know at Summerhall at 10.40 until August 31st.

★★★★★