“Shamilton! The Improvised Hip Hop Musical” – Assembly, Edinburgh Fringe

This is part of a series of shorter reviews from Edinburgh Fringe, August 2024.

Based on the musical Hamilton, “Shamilton” is an improvised musical from company “Baby Wants Candy” that tells the story of a random famous person. Suggestions for the show that we saw included Alec Baldwin, Genghis Khan and Boudicca, before it was decided that we would be seeing the inaugural, and final, performance of “Taylor Swift: The Musical”.

The cast began by gathering information from the audience on Taylor Swift, putting a lot of them in their back pocket to use in the show later. This included facts such as the names of her songs, her ex-boyfriends and her ongoing battle with record producers that had led to her creating “Taylor’s Version” of a lot of her songs.

The six-person cast began by spoofing the opening number of “Hamilton”, and this was the highlight of the show. The rap verses were incredible, invented on the spot and name-dropping Swift’s songs such as “Bad Blood”, “Antihero” and “Shake It Off”. From there, the story took us back to Taylor’s initial longing to become a country singer, before a conversation with Elizabeth Taylor convinced her to become more mainstream in order to get richer (in an excellent performance of a song entitled “You’re a woman”).

She ended up signing a deal with an executive producer named Mr Executive (“The Record’s On Top”), and it seemed that our villain had entered the play – until, for some reason, Elizabeth Taylor became the villain. One of the more fun moments of the play saw Taylor dream about her ex-boyfriends (“The Ex-Boyfriend Song”), which included Joe Jonas and Jake Gyllenhaal, and also Alec Baldwin (the cast deciding to reference the earlier audience suggestion) and Danny DeVito (for some reason). The play began to enter absurdity as Taylor Swift was encouraged by Kendrick Lamar to murder Elizabeth Taylor, as that would solve all of her problems.

Overall, the plot was a little lacking, but the musical and rap improv skills on display were excellent. I also enjoyed the sneaky Hamilton references – including randomly picking up chairs during dramatic moments. If you’re into musical improv, this is truly at the top of the game.

Tom Morley, August 2024

“Shamilton! The Improvised Hip Hop Musical” plays at Assembly George Square Studios at 6:20pm until 25th August.