Even if you haven’t read Anne Frank’sThe Diary of a Young Girl (or at least not since it was assigned by your secondary school teacher), you’re likely familiar with it being one of the 20th Century’s most enduring accounts of the Holocaust, penned by a Jewish teenager in hiding.
On the surface, Salty Brine’s riotous cabaret which takes inspiration from it might seem a far cry from the haunting original text, but peel the onion further and you’ll realise you’ve signed up for an emotional rollercoaster that will land you in unexpected places.
How Strange It Is focuses on the universal experience of young love and has been distilled down from Neutral Milk Hotel’s poetic indie rock album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, remarkably also inspired by Anne Frank.
“In my early twenties I fell deeply in love and wrote about it in my diary,” Brine reveals. “I still have those silly, funny, dirty, weird, embarrassing entries. And when you hear my diary, you think of your diary, which perhaps wasn’t very different from Anne Frank writing about being a teenage girl in love, despite the horrific circumstances she was living in. And you marvel at how even then, love happened anyway. How is it possible for the world to be what it is, and there to still be love? It’s ugly, gorgeous and complicated – that’s the point I’m making.”
The show is the latest instalment of Brine’s The Living Record Collection, where he picks apart an album and stitches it back together, capturing its original spirit but creating something entirely new with sharp writing, pageantry and live music.
It’s a clever format that draws in audiences driven by nostalgia for their favourite yesteryear bangers, as well as the uninitiated, who discover the music by way of the theatre.
“Whether I’ve picked Annie Lennox’s Diva or Led Zeppelin’s IV, the show is a means to relive the music that coalesced around your soul when you were young and that will stay with you forever.”
Brine’s performances are genre-defying and run the spectrum from extravagant drag numbers to barebones stool-and-microphone solo work. What can we expect this time?
“I take a broad view of cabaret,” he smiles. “This show is a really theatrical experience, where I have some tricks up my sleeve with costumes and props to make weird, crazy, magical things happen on stage with very little.”
Even so, Brine describes the Fringe as “the most thrilling and exhausting thing” and admits he’s been preparing for his 2026 return as an elite athlete would the Olympics.
“The show is very physically and vocally demanding. There’s four musicians, but really it’s just me singing, talking, running and dancing for 90 minutes until I’m drenched in sweat. There’s no break, and then it’s rinse and repeat everyday for a month. So I have a game plan that involves sleeping well, resting my voice and trying my best to avoid amazing Scottish junk food.”
It’s a hefty commitment, but one the self-professed theatre nerd insists on, to keep the Santa Claus magic of the production alive for his audience.
The Living Record Collection is an ambitious project by design, and this particular show seems intent on straddling the divide between poetic, intellectually ambitious theatre and crowd-pleasing spectacle.
By sharing the deeply personal and weaponising humour, Brine cleverly maintains the gravitas that comes with tackling a Holocaust narrative, while downplaying the inbuilt “heaviness”.
“Let me put it this way,” he says. “I believe that if we genuinely laugh really hard, deep down something in us opens up and we’re more available to feel complicated, difficult emotions.”
Salty Brine: HOW STRANGE IT IS (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show), Summerhall, until 30 Aug, 9.30pm