Whether you grew up on Blue’s Clues or are just vaguely aware of it as a cultural phenomenon, you’ll enjoy Steve Burns: Alive at Underbelly Cowgate (Belly Button). There are moments for the child in all of us, and plenty of jokes for the raunchy adults we’ve become.
The show is told by Steve Burns, yes, that Steve, from ‘our show’, as he calls it, presumably due to copyright, following many of his experiences as a young actor in New York somehow stumbling into one of the most meaningful children’s television shows of the Millennial generation.
Since the Nickelodeon programme premiered in the late 1990s, just as the internet launched, Burns became one of the focuses of ridiculous conspiracy theories online, mainly that he had died in some horrible manner. At the same time, Burns mastered a medium that has since radically shifted: television.
Burns is one of the leading examples of parasocial relationships, a significant issue associated with famous people due to their digital proximity. Chappell Roan decried the problem a couple of years ago, for instance. Straddling these media, as well as being an actual human being with an actual life, Burns isn’t sure what is real, and he still needs our help. Is any of this real?
There are several parts which are classic Fringe one-person confessional storytelling: Burns becoming a People magazine-fuelled sex symbol, freaking out the neighbourhood kids, and failing to set boundaries at a Make-A-Wish meet.
He talks a little about his acting training, wanting to be a serious actor like Al Pacino, though he’d settle for being the nameless actor who was always a side character in movies. He describes his Nickelodeon audition and being a full avant-garde weirdo to the camera, which worked. The producers were intrigued, then a focus group of kids loved it, and Burns’ fate was sealed.
Beyond the titillating personal narrative, Burns also navigates multimedia with ease onstage, much as he has throughout his career. He frequently uses a handheld camera, which projects onto an upstage screen, framing his face very closely just as he did in ‘our show’.
He considers the tribulations of being physically present and what it means to actually be present with someone, versus being intimate with them either on television or online. There’s a lot philosophically to consider about our relationship with media and the personalities who inhabit it, and Burns navigates those questions with curiosity and grace, a mature version of Steve from Blue’s Clues.
You don’t have to have grown up with the show to enjoy this romp, and there are only a few days left to catch Steve Burns: Alive, so get to Underbelly Cowgate (Belly Button) soon.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
