What Ever Happened to Harmony Banks?
★★★★☆ Pitch-perfect
Dance Base (Venue 22a): Tue 5 – Sun 10 Aug 2025
Review by Julia Amour
Dance theatre can be a powerful ‘show not tell’ medium for exploring states of mind, and What Ever Happened to Harmony Banks? at Dance Base until Sunday 10 August does just that, in a pitch-perfect portrait of the toxicity of celebrity culture.
The show opens with documentary-style video extract, capturing an awkward photoshoot intended to ‘look natural’. Performer and director Tess Letham soon enters, pushing – with great effort – a billboard on wheels like a ball and chain.
Tess Letham in What Ever Happened to Harmony Banks? Pic: Brian Hartley.
The billboard is a larger-than-life poster of Letham as pop princess Harmony Banks in orange and blue ruffles. As real-life Harmony, she stands glumly next to it, striking the same pose but looking worn and washed-out.
Cut to real-life Harmony in performance, pulsing out a spectacularly angular stadium-worthy routine to a power pop soundtrack and high-energy lighting.
All the while Lucas Kao’s elegant audio-visual work builds a credible montage of glamorous celebrity outings and adorable nesting at home – but also the moments of hiding behind baseball caps and huge shades, when audio news commentary snipes away at Harmony as an angry woman giving the evil eye.
Look At Me Now
And when a journalist questions whether she feels she has to tone down her personality, she starts quoting from (the less misogynistic and homophobic bits of) Chris Brown’s gangsta rap Look At Me Now, in a seething critique of the double standard male and female stars are held to.
Tess Letham in What Ever Happened to Harmony Banks? Pic: Brian Hartley.
The scene freezes and she starts to slide to the floor in the slowest of slo-mo. Bathed in low violet and sulphurous yellow light she looks feral and hunted, blinking and writhing as she shoots wary glances at the audience and the billboard.
Certain motifs recur: impeded movements like she’s dancing through mud or through the void of space; the on-screen elements focusing on split-screen close-ups of lips, teeth and eyes. The repetitions accrete meaning rather than being tedious, rhythmically conveying the dissociation and psychosis of being stuck in this brand persona for a lifetime.
a body in sickness
Choreography often ranges from robotic to rag doll-like, at times bringing to mind mythic stories of toys that come to life – most obviously Coppelia.
Elsewhere, movements speak more of a body in sickness: shaking, convulsing, retching. Finally, the audience is allowed just a hint of freer, more organic motions with arms outstretched and sensing, like a plant reaching for the light.
Tess Letham in What Ever Happened to Harmony Banks? Pic: Brian Hartley.
As befits the story of a pop superstar, lighting and sound designers (Michaella Fee and Dinah Mullen respectively) have achieved a high polish to the production values – while also melding stadium vibes with a queasy, glitchy sense of inner turmoil. Cleo Rose McCabe matches this with glamorous costumes that exude extroversion but peel off to reveal a pallid vulnerability.
layered and allusive strengths
The complex multi-disciplinary elements of the production interlock with precision, thanks to the support of the wider creative and production team of MC Lafitte, Andrea Cabrera Luna, Sian MacGregor and Alma Sua Lindenhovius.
Movement, music, video, lighting and snatches of monologue all combine perfectly to describe Harmony’s experience as mere words never could – so audiences will need to see the piece unmediated to appreciate its layered and allusive strengths.
Running time: 45 minutes (no interval).
Dance Base (DB3), 14-16 Grassmarket, EH1 2JU (Venue 22a).
Tuesday 5 – Sunday 10 August 2025.
Daily: 6.40pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Book here on EdFest.com.*
Tess Letham website: www.tessletham.com
Facebook: @tess.letham
Instagram: @tessletham
*affiliate link.
ENDS
