Here’s a sight not often seen at the Edinburgh Fringe: three older gentlemen take to the stage, dressed in white suits and shirts, with black bow ties and trousers. Lest the pedants insist on asking, they were also wearing shoes, though I offer no comment on the colour of their socks or their undergarments. A broad range of songs is played, and at the performance I attended, The Swells, as the trio call themselves, were joined by special guest singer Louise Holden.
Narrator and singer Malcolm Windsor is perhaps still best known amongst his peers for his work as a scientist – he is, technically, Dr Malcolm Windsor, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. At 86 years young, it is impressive he is at the Fringe at all (there are people I know who are considerably younger whose Fringe days, they say, are behind them), let alone singing and presenting his own show.
At the centre of the narrative is evidence, so to speak, that falling and being in love is not so much about the heart but about the brain – talk of dopamine, noradrenaline and endorphins is relatively brief (in part because the show is relatively brief), and I liked a proposition about the brain replacing the heart as the symbol for St Valentine’s Day – why not do things intelligently and intelligibly?
You’d be forgiven for thinking Windsor, whose band call themselves The Swells, had been performing at the Fringe for decades – this is, in fact, only The Swells’ fourth Fringe. I suppose a lifetime’s worth of experience of Love, Loss and Chemistry almost naturally gives this impression. Both Windsor and his musical director Jeremy Thorp are widowers (hence ‘loss’) and it’s marvellous that they’re singing and performing about their experiences. Many of the tunes follow a pattern of a verse or two being sung, then an instrumental interlude, before the song resumes. The sound balance between vocals and instruments is spot on, and Windsor is careful to pay tribute to his late wife without being overly saccharine about it. A pleasant and genteel experience.
Review by Chris Omaweng
What happens when two people meet and fall in or out of love? Or when they lose a loved one? In this new cabaret, Love, Loss and Chemistry, scientist and latterly jazz singer Malcolm Windsor reveals the subtle chemistry that influences when people meet and fall in love – or don’t. But make no mistake, this isn’t a science lesson. This is an exploration of the chemistry between couples through their life events, illustrated through both story and song.
Malcolm Windsor – singer
Jeremy Thorp – keyboard
Nick Gent – guitar
LOVE, LOSS AND CHEMISTRY
From Chemistry to Cabaret: A Love Story Told in Song
theSpace on the Mile at Edinburgh Fringe
12 to 17 August 2024
Shows and events booking now for Edinburgh Playhouse and for King’s Theatre Glasgow.
