QFWFQ
★★★★☆ Different
Summerhall (Venue 26): Thurs 6 – Mon 31 Aug 2026
Review by Hugh Simpson
QFWFQ at Summerhall is a hugely entertaining and emotional show that is difficult to categorise but easy to enjoy.
From Gregory Nussen, Daniel Segura and Suzanna Rosenthal Productions, it has already won awards at the Hollywood Fringe. Californian performance artist Nussen is the writer and performer of a wildly inventive show about stories, words, performance, creativity, belonging and identity.
QFWFQ promotion shot with Gregory Nussen. Pic Sonya Katarina.
It’s (loosely) based around Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night a Traveller, that postmodern book about the art of reading that features a great deal of second-person narrative and is either a work of genius or pretentious nonsense depending on your point of view. It’s also one of those books that seems resolutely unadaptable into other media (although Tim Crouch and Toby Jones had a pretty good stab at a radio version a couple of years back).
Anyway, Nussen has spent ten years failing to adapt the book, and this is the result. They play the titular QFWFQ (which they pronounce ‘quiff-wiffk’), who is the narrator of several of Calvino’s stories, although not If On A winter’s Night A Traveller. Keeping up so far?
They welcome the audience, riff on the Fringe experience, fail to start the show several times, and begin stories by authors of various nationalities which seem to be unfinished, ‘defective’, or otherwise forbidden. This draws the ire of the Institute for the Preservation of Everything, under whose aegis QFWFQ is apparently operating.
playful edge
While there is definitely a playful edge to all of it (and some of the audience interaction could safely be categorised as unusual) it isn’t nearly as self-referential as it might sound. There’s also a decidedly serious edge to it.
Nussen deals with the topic of which stories get told, who gets to tell them and what the effect might be on people who don’t fit in with the accepted narrative. That might be a queer person who is told that their identity is not valid, or a Jewish person being ostracised for their support for Palestinians. The strongly personal element they bring to the show gives it great emotional heft among the wordy fun.
That stories have real power is exemplified by the fascinating way this production careers along its apparently unfinished route; in truth, Nussen and director Hannah Pilkes are in complete control. Would that the controllers of narratives in the rest of the world had as great a sense of responsibility, and as fertile an imagination, as Nussen. (They do a pretty good Scottish accent too).
Running time: One hour (no interval).
Summerhall (Former Gentlemen’s Locker Room), 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL (Venue 26).
Thursday 6 – Monday 31 August 2026.
Daily (not 17, 24): 11.40am; (Also Suns 23 & 30: 10.10am)
Tickets and details: Book here at EdFringe.com.
Tickets direct from venue: Book here.
Greg Nussen website: www.gregnussen.com
Instagram: @gregorynussen
ENDS
