one4review | On 28, Aug 2026

No stranger to the Edinburgh Fringe, Keith Alessi’s one man show about the healing powers of music and community is back again for its 5th year and it has lost none of its sparkle.

For those only aware of the show through its odd title, Alessi tells a simple yet powerful story about his life, growing up on the US/Canada border as the son of Italian immigrants with a love of banjo music and the tomatoes that always seemed to be available. Alessi’s relationship with his parents and in particular his father was complicated and often unhappy and, when the highly acid tomatoes who grew up eating lead in part to a rare form of cancer, they become symbolic of those relationships and memories best left in the past. While undergoing treatment Alessi finally decides to start learning to play the banjos he’d spent a life collecting but never using and this activity becomes symbolic of his rebirth after successfully undergoing treatment.

On stage as he masterfully tells his story, Alessi has a selection of the notoriously finickity instruments which, as the show goes on, he plucks and strums at to play to occasional tune as he recounts his life and illustrates the history of the much-maligned banjo music, particularly the traditional “mountain music” that he has learned to love in the Appalachian Mountains.

Perhaps one of the most famous things about this very popular show is the financial model. All artist fees and a vast amount of all other moneys received are donated back to good causes, including various cancer, community, music, and theatre charities. For this run they are being given directly back to Summerhall. It’s a rare thing to see someone so generous even at an arts festival like the Fringe, though, being cynical for a brief moment, that’s probably because it would be completely impossible to anyone who hadn’t already led a very successful career as an accountant and CEO and almost certainly has no mortgage to pay off. And perhaps it is worth addressing that there is a certain level on which this show is the hobby of someone who can fund their own show, no matter how self-indulgent it might be and shows don’t get much more self-indulgent than one-man shows about one’s own life. But you know what? That charitable and generous soul means that even if this show was bad, which it isn’t, and even if it was wildly self-aggrandising, which it also isn’t, I’d still be fine with recommending it because its heart is 100% in the right place.

If you’re a fan of one-man storytelling shows – and a little bit of banjo strumming – you will struggle to find a more pure example of the platonic ideal anywhere.

****1/2
Reviewed by Tom
Summerhall – Tech Cube
Until 31 August