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Fringe Spotlight: Basically Nocturnal

Thomas Currie combines insomnia and late-night cabaret.

Gaydar

30 May 2025 — 6 min read

Thomas Currie is bringing his show, Basically Nocturnal, to the Edinburgh Fringe.

A combination of stories and songs aims to create a communal sharing of insomnia.

Performance Dates: 30th July – 25th August 2025
Venue: Gilded Balloon Patter House (Blether), 3 Chambers Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1HT

Thomas Currie on How To Date Men

For our podcast, How To Date Men, we caught up with Thomas Currie for a behind-the-scenes look at the show.

In the conversation, we talk late night storytelling, insomniac remixes, and the raw-dogging Scotland.

Listen to the episode

This show is about being a night owl. Are we talking about working through the night or lying in bed with insomnia?

We're definitely talking about working through the night, having a great time through the night.

I'm definitely an insomniac. I think that's something that a lot of people experience. I've read a statistic somewhere - one in three of us experience some level of insomnia throughout life. It's not about playing the victim or anything like that. But it is about the wonder and the magic of the night.

The show came about because I was living in Brisbane in Australia for a while and I sort of got into this habit of getting around with friends very late at night and we would stay up to the early hours of the morning just sharing stories. I mean, you would think that we'd be going out, hitting the town, partying every night and things like that.

But we were working particularly hard at the time and that wasn't so much an option. So we decided to stay up all night, which some would argue is maybe worse. Certainly for levels of concentration. But no, it was a great time and we would sort of sit around and share these stories. know, someone would have a dreadful dating story. And there was always the guy in the corner claiming that a ghost lived downstairs, you know. And it was just this cool kind of vibe. And that's what we try and recreate in this show is this intimate setting where people are sharing stories.

I've always said it's like a conversation with the audience, although it's quite a one sided conversation from my end.

It's a combination of music, of songs, as well as you talking at the audience?

Correct, it's mostly music. So they're a selection of stories told through music. And that makes it quite interesting from a creation standpoint, because you're trying to find ways of weaving short, almost vignettes, you know, into song.

Original songs or covers?

A mixture of both. The majority are original and written specifically for the show. And then there's a whole host of other material that I've rearranged and tweaked in particular ways to get what I want out of them. We do it on stage with just me singing and playing the piano, and then I'm joined by a cellist and that cellist loops and uses effects and we try and create these cool soundscapes that weave through the songs. So even the songs that you know are treated in a slightly different way.

You mentioned that it's a dialogue, a conversation with the audience. Is there some kind of value in that shared experience of being up all night?

I think there's value in sharing communal experience, no matter what the experience might be - there's always value in sharing that together.

Having said that, I've always totally been fine with being on my own at night. That's for me when I get the most creative. And a lot of this show was written at 2 a.m.

Why do you think that is your creative sort of purple patch? What is it about that middle of the night kind of vibe that you connect with?

There's something that focuses you. Call it the darkness outside call it the fact that everybody else is off asleep. No one's WhatsApping you. Even if you try and WhatsApp people, they won't get back to you, you know? It's focusing.

I respond to that well. So I'm able to, you know, get through ideas and branch out a bit more and also tweak those ideas and sort of, you know, just piece the whole show together a bit more easily in the night. That's not to say that by morning you don't wake up and go, well, that was terrible and throw everything out and start again.

In the the conversation that you're having with the audience, are you hearing their stories of being up all night? Or is it really that they're creating the communal space?

Yes, they're the communal space. That's why I often say it's a one sided conversation. It's the vibe and the atmosphere more than the content.

One of my favourite things about just creating any type of theatre and being in that space and being in an intimate performance space where the audience is right there. The best thing about it is that atmosphere. It is that thing, whatever you want to call it, that everybody sort of feeds off and it's particularly special and very challenging to describe, but when you feel it, you know you've felt it.

Which is kind of classic cabaret, isn't it? And cabaret is an art form that really lends itself to the night owls. When did you realise that cabaret was your vibe?

To be honest, I can't even pinpoint the moment when I knew cabaret was really a thing. I think it was something that I grew up sort of knowing about. I think there's also an image of cabaret, which I think the world has sort of moved on from, but there's still sort of this image, you know, the older guy in the corner with a big mic and a piano singing some old ditty.

I always wanted to do things slightly differently and, you know, change it up a bit.

What do hope that people feel when they come to see Basically Nocturnal?

It's all about having a great time and having a laugh and just really thoroughly enjoying your night out and sharing that experience of being a bit of a night owl. It's perfect for night owls. It's perfect if you're not a night owl and you happen to be a night owl on that night.

It's a good night out and I would encourage everyone to get there.