6 hours ago
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‘Welcome to the most controversial show on the fringe!” Some audiences will diagnose self-regard in that intro by rookie standup Amanda Knox. For others, as for Knox herself, it merely acknowledges the continuing efforts to silence her. But then, Knox is “the human version of the blue/gold dress”, a canvas on to which we all project guilty, innocent – or weird. Her innocence now proved, it’s the last of these charges she takes on in this fringe outing, retelling her oft-told tale through the lens of new motherhood.
Is it a disgrace that she’s telling it at all – and profiting from it, some would say. (Although they’ve presumably never taken a show to the Edinburgh fringe.) Classifying Cartwheel as comedy may be a misstep; it risks looking insensitive and inaccurately describes the show. But, judging by the evidence, Knox would be damned whatever she did. Now at least she can tell her story in her own way, articulating a growing anger at her treatment and a determination to raise her daughter, not to be silenced and scared but “to be the exact girl I was punished for being”.
If we’re here for an insight into what it’s like to be Amanda Knox, we get it, as episodes from the 39-year-old’s “extremely prolonged and public trauma” are recounted while folding children’s clothes and maintaining a dialogue with the voice of her four-year-old daughter. How can she tell her kids about her wrongful imprisonment? As a Dr Seuss story: “Knox the fox in a box with locks”? How to react when her baby’s birth is greeted with hateful online abuse? Becoming a mum has refined Knox’s understanding and sharpened her fury at everything she, and her own mother, have been put through.
More power to her for peppering this account with several adroit jokes – even if they elicit more rueful smiles than laughs. She’s an inexperienced comedian, this isn’t a “show” – but she shapes and performs this umpteenth telling of her story well. I found its spirit of defiance stirring, I found it respectful to the memory of her murdered roommate, and as well judged an effort by Knox to reclaim her awful story as we have any right to expect.
