Review: Steve Burns: Alive, Underbelly Cowgate

Steve Burns is a masterful storyteller. This room at Underbelly is full of adoring fans, but you can hear a pin drop as he speaks from a huge video screen behind the iconic Thinking Chair from TV children’s show Blue’s Clues. “It’s you!” he says, re-enacting his familiar, intimate style from the programme, enquiring how his now grown-up viewers have been and instantly bathing them in a heartwarming wave of nostalgia. 

He has the room utterly captivated, telling the true story of his almost accidental and meteoric rise to fame as the host of a groundbreaking, globally successful production. This, before an inexplicable rumour of his death created a false reality that he was unable to escape and which ultimately damaged him deeply. In Steve Burns: Alive, he challenges us to consider what’s real, in a deceptively complex and cleverly crafted piece of work, sensitively delivered to devastatingly moving effect.

Blues Clues first aired in late 1996, with the internet soon on the rise, but without our current understanding of toxic media manipulation and parasocial relationships; how they work and their impact. For those watching, Steve the character was a very real person, and Burns explores how this allowed the subjugation of him as an actual human individual behind it, to the point where he was relentlessly told he didn’t even exist and began to believe it. The mental health implications of this are enormous, and from today’s standpoint, clear. In those days it wasn’t even a thing. 

Burns relates a searingly painful tale with huge care for his audience, couching it in humour to soften it. He understands what character Steve means to some people, explaining through one incident which is profoundly touching, so he would never dishonour that bond by hurting them. And he’s funny – hilariously funny, with perfect timing and delivery, the audience shaking with laughter. 

But the exquisite storytelling is simultaneously delivered in a form that incisively enacts the theme of uncertain reality. At times he talks directly to the audience; at other times, through a camera, projected onto the screen. There are moments when we don’t really know if he is speaking live or as a recording. Maybe he is dead after all? At other times, he’s re-enacting his mental health crisis, hiding in a blanket fort and creating a temporal overlap as he appears both on the screen and elsewhere. He conjures the warm and healthy relationship his viewers think they have with him through their own imaginative engagement, but also the acute loneliness of a tortured man, and a sense of insecurity is meticulously forged. This is skilled, viscerally palpable production by ‘the dead guy from that cartoon show’.

Come the end of the performance, I have to admit, I was kind of tearful – not only at the heartbreaking story but because at times the audience happily glossed over the depth of anguish so honestly delivered – perhaps a hint of how it could have been allowed to happen? But Burns regularly deflects attention back to his fans, asking what they need and making them comfortable in the storytelling space they perhaps didn’t realise they would encounter. It’s enormously touching.

Charged with searing pain and balmed with care, this is a phenomenal work and definitely one of the best things I’ve seen this year, at Edinburgh and beyond. It is intelligent, funny and enormously layered, while also genuinely moving. Steve is so very emotionally generous to his audience – who clearly adore him – despite his own bruising trauma, and brave to expose his vulnerability in a form that might just help others manage their own world and avoid recurrence. Respect due.

Presented by George Strus for Benson Drive Productions
Written by Steve Burns
Co-written by Matthew Freeman
Directed by Sivan Battat

Steve Burns: Alive plays at Underbelly Cowgate until Sunday 30 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.