Review: KeVIN!!!!!

📍 Forth, Pleasance Courtyard

🗓️ 21st August 2025

🎟️ PR Invite

📸 Image Credit: Recent Cutbacks

Following the success of their previous shows — Hold On To Your Butts and Run, You Fools! — Recent Cutbacks are back at Edinburgh Fringe with their new show, KeVIN!!!!!

The show consists of a shot-by-shot parody of the well-known Christmas movie Home Alone. Using clever camera work, puppets and live sound effects, we’re taken on a trip down memory lane. I will admit this is my first Recent Cutbacks show, having continuously missed out on seeing their previous two productions, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the performance.

Luckily, I was really pleasantly surprised. It’s absolutely fascinating watching the cast work together to pull off a show that is so visually impressive. There’s a big screen up on the wall behind them where you essentially watch “the movie”, kicking things off with a hilarious interpretation of the pre-movie trailers and the 20th Century Fox introduction before diving into the film itself.

There are endless intricate room models, house models, little puppets and hilarious uses of well-known children’s toys to make up the vast list of characters in the McCallister household. It’s both incredibly enjoyable and fascinating to watch this talented team navigate the stage as they recreate the various scenes. A green screen at one end of the stage is somehow combined with scenes happening in other parts of the stage, with the characters even coming out into the audience at various points during the production.

So they must have some really impressive cameras to do all this, right? Well, it looked like it was being filmed on smartphones. As a grown adult, I almost fell into a childlike sense of wonder and awe as this show was pulled together — without any mistakes or hiccups (at least as far as I could see). They somehow combined scenes from two different sides of the room into one seamless shot, and my mind was somewhat blown by the technical mastery of it all. The cast danced around each other seamlessly, never letting the momentum of the show drop at any point.

There’s so much humour throughout the performance, and the puppets are used so cleverly to portray the various characters. Live sound effects and singing also feature in the show, with some really impressive vocals — particularly during ‘O Holy Night’.

Safe to say, I’m now fully sold on Recent Cutbacks’ performances and absolutely need to see their previous shows. Clever, unique and technically really impressive, KeVIN!!!!! is a really enjoyable show for adults and children alike!