Thrones! The Musical: a tribute to fandom
At the Edinburgh Fringe, paying tribute to the biggest TV shows of the day (and their built-in audience) is a well-worn way that acts try to stand out from the crowd. In its third sell-out year, Thrones! The Musical, a Game of Thrones homage at Assembly George Square, proves it’s more than its gimmick.
In the show, a group hold a house party for their recently divorced friend. When they discover she’s never seen an episode of Game of Thrones, they use household objects to re-enact scenes from the show. Highly detailed in its homage, this very funny musical gets around the usual budgetary limitations of the Fringe with a cosplayer’s ingenuity. A dragon made out of two curtain rails and an umbrella received a spontaneous round of applause.
Loaded with in-jokes and great tunes, the show is right up to date with the latest GoT season. (The performance I saw featured a rhyming couplet about a major death from last week’s episode, and the recent much-mocked Ed Sheeran cameo.) More than that, Thrones! is a marvellous celebration of the show’s devoted fans – sending up their snobbishness about reading the books on which the show is based and anger at the speed with which George RR Martin writes them.
It’s an extremely funny reminder of why Game of Thrones is the best-loved show on TV.
Christian Butler is a spiked columnist. Follow him on Twitter: @CPAButler
Thrones! The Musical is at Assembly George Square Studios until 28 August.
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