Review: Chunky Jewellery, Fringe 2025

Scotland’s acclaimed Barrowland Ballet brings a show of profound heart and defiant humour to the Fringe with Chunky Jewellery. Performed by company artistic director Natasha Gilmore and collaborator Jude Williams, this is a deeply personal piece of dance-theatre that uses the high art of performance to put the messy, mundane, and monumental moments of women’s lives centre stage. Born from a single year that contained two births and a death, it’s a story of friendship that is at times as funny as it is unflinching.

Mostly the show landed with me, and as a single child-free man, I’m as far from the characters as you might imagine. The closer the two got to the realness of life and the further away from the high arts of the theatre, the more I liked the show.

A Statement Against Invisibility

The title refers to the bold, noticeable accessories a woman of a certain age might wear to declare her presence. It’s a powerful statement against the cultural invisibility that often descends just as a woman’s life becomes heaviest. Chunky Jewellery shines a brilliant, interrogating light on the cruelty of being overlooked while carrying the world on your shoulders. It’s a defiant roar against being ignored.

For most of the play, the Chunky Jewellery on show were literally a light.

The show focuses on the immense emotional burden that so many women bear, caring upwards for ageing parents and downwards for their children. Gilmore and Williams transform this “sandwich generation” reality into a compelling narrative. There’s a poignant exploration of the idea that these women are expected to be the invisible stagehands who make the production of family life run seamlessly. But this show argues they are not unseen crew; they are the main characters, doing all the work.

This is an “alternative love story” about an unbreakable female friendship forged in the middle of it all. Brutally honest and open-hearted, the performance documents the 34,000 tears and 18 bursts of laughter that defined their year. It was a year in which good news seemed like a good idea, but nothing more.

An achingly joyous celebration of sisterhood.”

High Art and Heartbreak

The show is a formidable display of talent. Gilmore and Williams are captivating performers, and their skills as both dancers and singers are undeniable. With direction from the Olivier Award-nominated Ben Duke of Lost Dog, the piece moves with a physical grace that gives tangible weight to the emotional storytelling. This is a performance masterclass that moves with grace and lands with power.

It begins with a meta-theatrical flourish, as the two friends plan the very show we are about to see. In a Fringe landscape full of self-referential work, one wonders if this trend of exposing the creative process is a humanistic counterpoint to the rise of AI. There is certainly nothing artificial about Chunky Jewellery.

For all its technical prowess, the show is at its most potent in its moments of raw, narrative honesty. While the sections of abstract surrealism are beautifully executed, it is the gut-punch of the personal storytelling that hits the hardest. The show’s soul is in the friendship, the grief, and the laughter.

Overall

The audience, predominantly women, was deeply connected, with some rising for an ovation at the end. While the subject matter will speak most loudly to those with similar life experiences, its core message is universal. This reviewer, a man with no children, still often found himself moved by its story of love, loss, and resilience. Born from the pedigree of its celebrated creators, Chunky Jewellery does not disappoint.

A moving, funny, and deeply necessary piece of theatre.”