Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2017 – Confabulation***

Every act of remembering is an act of storytelling.  So, here’s mine.  It starts with a spotty teenager at a Motorhead gig and ends at the cutting edge of memory research.  The bellowing fans, the smell of beer and sweat, the thunderous music.  When I think back, it’s all so vivid.  And it’s all completely made up.  Join me, Eamonn Fleming, writer, performer and O level biologist (grade C) as I stumble through the amazing world of memory palaces, false memories and Werther’s Originals.  A funny, startling show about not being able to trust a single thing you remember.

Over the course of an hour in Confabulation, Eamonn Fleming takes the audience on a journey through his childhood memories and how memory works.  That sounds like an audacious challenge but he pulls it off with the aid of an electric guitar, a flip chart and a slide projector.

The show includes a few other props, including books that were helpful when writing the show and some Hello Kitty memory cards but mainly Fleming is the focus of the show.  As a host and narrator, he is highly personable and I can’t fault his taste in music.

This isn’t a weighty show and it is all the better for it.  Fleming takes us through various theories of how memory works, the difference between short and long-term, as well as how our brains retrieves memories.

In less accomplished hands that could prove dull material but he deftly takes us through the science and uses examples to show how it all works.  Fleming doesn’t treat the subject material lightly though but instead creates an informative, fun and enjoyable journey through the windmills of your mind.

Mind, I’m still scratching my head at how Saxon ended up supporting Motorhead though, a complete reversal of their status in the Eighties.  Overall though I would say it’s the right way round.