Cogito, Ergo… Something?
★★★★☆ Dark
Bedlam Theatre (Venue 49): Wed 19 – Sun 30 Aug 2026
Review by Neil McPherson
Cogito, Ergo…Something?, written and directed by James Harvey and performed by the Edinburgh University Theatre Company at their iconic Bedlam Theatre home (“not a church”, as the helpful sign says outside), has very dark roots.
EUTC’s new script harks back through Hitchcock to 1924 Chicago, when Nathan Leopold (19) and Richard Loeb (18) kidnapped and murdered a 14 year old boy. The case found its infamy not just in the murder but in its motivation: inspired by the “ubermensche” philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, the killers wanted to commit “the crime of the century”, untrammelled by conventional norms and morality.
Rishi Bhardwaj with Oliver Mason and Lucas Knepper. Pic: Emily Sharp.
The pair felt that their self-avowed superior intellect put them outside the law and able to concoct the perfect crime. Needless to say, they were not, and both were sentenced to life imprisonment at a trial which inspired the 1959 courtroom drama, Compulsion.
More pertinently here, the events surrounding the murder itself inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 movie, Rope, from which Harvey quotes the shocking opening scene – complete with motive, set, and the premise of a hidden body at a dinner party – not to mention the running theme of alcohol and the sexual relationship between the two principals.
However, rather than following the whodunnit and why route, Harvey switches to a rising Noises Off/Brian Rix farce path, involving considerable clattering about the stage, drinks being spilled, body being moved and coat stands falling over, as the various dinner part guests are introduced. This sits somewhat uneasily with the macabre opening and chilling underlying premise of the murder itself.
underlying faux intellectualism
The acting from the seven strong cast is excellent throughout, and well played for laughs as they portray, in the words of the play’s flyer, a bunch of “horrible, posh students”. The two leads Anthony “don’t call me Tone” (Lucas Knepper) and Sebastian (Rishi Bhardwaj) are on stage throughout and manage to bring the underlying faux intellectualism behind the crime to life, before things descend into whoops-a-daisy farce tropes of burnt chicken, spilled wine and running round the sofa, all of which seem to belong in a different play.
Rishi Bhardwaj, Oliver Mason, Lucas Knepper, Jude Araim and Reuben Stickland. Pic: Emily Sharp.
Emily Cottle’s Agatha holds the stage with great presence as does Oliver Mason’s Wyndham who, channelling The Fast Show’s Rowley Birkin’s incomprehensible verbiage, holds the humour and performance as a young fogey well beyond a one minute sketch.
The dinner guests are completed by a clever turn and construct from the insufferable pair of new loves Alex (Reuben Stickland) and Alex (Jude Araim), whose prior relationships among the guests leads to some Mozartian opera buffa tones as the guests realise who is going out with whom, and who dumped who.
Special praise goes to Dani J Bryant as the victim, Henry. They have little to say, being murdered in the opening seconds, but are central to much of the activity over the next hour. They will likely be black and blue by the end of the run.
In the end, this is an amusing farce performed with talent by a young cast. Just don’t think too much about the real life horror that inspired it.
Running time: One hour (no interval).
Bedlam Theatre (Auditorium), 11b Bristo Place EH1 1 EZ (Venue 49).
Wednesday 19 – Sunday 30 August 2026.
Daily (not Mon): 12.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here at EdFringe.com.
Instagram: @cogito.fringe
Instagram: @bedlamfringe
ENDS
