Badgers by Malaika Kegode: At Once Sappy, Tender, and Terrifying (review) *****

A warm and life-affirming if bittersweet performance, Badgers is full of charm, character, and beauty. Writer and performer Malaika Kegode’s narration is complemented by a live score from folk-prog duo Jakabol as well as digital elements, including video screens dotted around the stage and a number of pre-recorded voiceovers.

These elements are superbly blended together to tell a modern folk take that’s as sappy as it is scary, as tender as it is terrifying. The story follows underachieving podcaster Meles Kostas, who stumbles on a cold case, the stuff of folk horror, after moving home to the countryside to care for her terminally ill and much more accomplished mother, Dorothy.

Kegode frames her story by addressing the audience as Meles, narrating everything in the second person. It’s a bold choice, but it works – rather than merely empathising with Meles, we ourselves feel Meles’s insecurity over how her podcasting compares to her mother’s trailblazing career as a ‘proper’ journalist, the pressure she is under to finally find a real story before her mum passes on.

By putting us in Meles’s shoes, Kegode enables the audience to root for her even as she undertakes a ruthlessly exploitative true crime podcast investigation into the fate of heartbroken songwriter Ben, who disappeared nearby after sampling something that wasn’t his to take for his debut album.

Kegode’s narration is well-crafted too, composed of sleek, shape-shifting lines that shift from the informal tones of a casual chat with a friend at times even singling out individual audience members – to the intense and lyrical pitch of rhyming poetry.

Jakabol’s performance adds an extra layer of immersion to the show, effectively bringing the music at the heart of the story to life. Ironically for a show all tied together by the theme of letting things go, Badgers itself is hard to let go of, at an hour and ten minutes the performance still feels short and sweet, so that by the final curtain call, the audience joins Meles and Ben in not being ready to move on.

Badgers is at Traverse 2 at Traverse Theatre, 6th till 30th August (except 10th, 17th, 24th)

Photo credit: Paul Blakemore