It’s always a good Fringe when Cora Bissett is in town and this production, her latest, is a stonker.

She’s written and directed a wonderful universe centred around deafness, and succeeds in bringing young deaf people into the spotlight in a way that challenges our societal prejudices about the subject. It opens the audience’s minds to the fact that deafness does not need to exclude people from music.

Bissett collaborates with famed Scottish musician KT Tunstall to create a piece of gig theatre, with really great songs, that will resonate with many people.

We’ve all been there.  The theatre night where the BSL interpreter is hard at work, stage right, signing for the very small number of deaf people in the audience.  Admit it, you might have wondered why? Bissett takes this and turns it on its head, shakes it up, pumps it full of oxygen and goes mad for it.

Our narrator for the evening (and playing multiple supporting roles) Hannah Jarrett-Scott is resplendent in ginger hair, green specs, and fiery red trousers, she is flanked by the onstage BSL interpreter (Petre Dobre) in ill-matching tartan. You’ve never seen BSL interpretation like this. Trust me. You haven’t. You may never again, unless this sets a trend.

Together they prowl the stage, sparring, weaving amongst each other. A Greek Chorus of only two, but they own this show from the off.

Our main characters, down at heel, ex-pop star Andy, (an excellent Dylan Wood who recently fronted Once in Pitlochry) and deaf music lover Joe (a mesmerising performance by deaf actor Jamie Rae and collaborator in the production with Bissett) meet on a Glasgow street as Andy is busking. Robbed by some wee radges he has no way of going home, so Joe invites him back to his. And so begins a rollercoaster emotional relationship of songwriting, love, IP theft, and misunderstandings.

The plot in itself is fairly predictable, there is little in the way of surprise and at times it’s a little tricky to follow. But this is not a plot-driven show, it’s aimed straight at the heart and delivers massively on that front.

The triumph of this show is to take signing and singing and anagrammatically join them at the hip. All the actors sign, there’s captioning, there’s subtitling and there’s Petre Dobre.  It’s a visual assault and it mostly works. But it’s Jamie Rae steals the hearts of the audience with his heartfelt and unfamiliar performance. Great stuff.

The Singer is at Traverse 1 at Traverse Theatre until Sun 30 Aug 2026