Benjamin Scheuer, who recently presented The Lion at London’s Southwark Playhouse, returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a new solo musical, A Mountain For Elodie, a very personal and touching autobiographical story which tugs at the heart strings while very much offering a vision of hope.
As a teenager, Scheuer lost his father and then faced his own battle with Cancer in his late twenties. Anyone who saw The Lion would already know some of this story, but in A Mountain For Elodie, Scheuer concentrates on the next chapter of his own story.
In this instalment Benjamin meets Jemima, falls in love and convinces her to move to New York with him. Like most couples they experience their ups and downs, especially as Scheuer struggles to give up his career as a touring musician. Hope does come though, through a baby girl whom they name Elodie, and this ninety minute musical very much feels like a love letter to both Jemima and Elodie.
It’s the music that’s the highlight of this show. Scheuer’s songs all seem to have this soothing effect that make you feel like you’re melting into your seat and losing yourself in the world that is being created around you. Scheuer works with half a dozen guitars and a piano, creating rich and alluring sounds.
The storytelling aspects, which generally come in between each song, is certainly very poignant. Each individual story essentially sets up the next song, but it also drives forward the narrative and whisks us up in Scheuer’s life story. The spell is sometimes broken, as the sections are read directly from the script and with his head in the pages, Scheuer’s precious connection with the audience is lost.
This format for A Mountain For Elodie suggests that Benjamin Scheuer is more comfortable performing music than monologues. Understandable, as he is a musician first and foremost, but this is such a beautiful story it would have been nice to maintain that sense of being fully immersed in it.
However, the gorgeous music and Scheuer’s undeniable likability as a performer makes A Mountain For Elodie a gloriously enjoyable evening. Perhaps as the run continues there will be less reliance on the script and more focus on this very special kind of storytelling.
