There’s a sense of paranoia lingering in the air; the audience can feel it as soon as Kate Burgess, winner of the Fringe’s best emerging artist award in 2024, begins her solo dance-comedy show Full Time Ex-Lover.

Paranoia is what this is show is all about: Burgess explores and reflects on many missed red flags in numerous failed relationships, all the while learning to love herself and give herself the time of day she gives others.

Oh, and there’s a lot of dancing — a mixed salad bowl of excentric and raunchy contemporary dance. You will see a crab walk. Yes, it’s amazing.

Full Time Ex-Lover is hosted in the back room of trap., a basement cocktail bar down Cold Chisel Lane. It’s small — hosting, by my count, fewer than six chairs and two tables (one affixed to the wall) in the bar. The trapped — almost claustrophobic — space opens, however, once you enter the back room.

The show begins with silence, evoking a sense of trepidation in the air. Burgess rustles in bed, awakens, and reaches for a bottle of Coca-Cola on her bedside table. Her hands are tied by red rope; as she struggles to pry it away, she discovers the rope wrapped all around her body, suffocating her as she jumps from bed and struggles to escape this new reality.

This intro, and the whole show, are highlighted by a wonderfully minimalistic set design, utilising quite a confined space in an efficient manner. The room is, of course, mainly audience seats, whereas the ‘stage’ is simply a bed, a whiteboard, and a bit of empty space by the foot of the bed. It’s all lit by a mix of yellow and purple LEDs, calling to mind a retro-futuristic vibe. It’s the perfect canvas for Burgess’s dancing and, in moments where she’s not moving, highlight her telling expressions. Her eyes are particularly revealing; the slightest change in them alters the context of entire scenes.

Full Time Ex Lover oscillates between scenes of foreboding intensity, melancholic lows, and frantic highs superbly. It’s all tied together by a distinct self-depreciating and almost‐dark humour — only highlighted further by the physical comedy Burgess wraps the show together with. That physical comedic wrapping, however, was a double-edged sword; it primed some of the audience to laugh at a point where the story reached its most serious peak.

Despite this, the comedy is top notch. Raucous laughter filled the room in many instances, brought about by a comedic timing bestowed onto Burgess by some sort of deity. In dialogue and music, too, she evokes the aforementioned self-depreciation and darkness in a way that makes the audience both empathise for her and laugh with her at the frankly insane situation she’s found herself in. It’s all wittily presented, sometimes truncated by the occasional off-the-wall crash out that fits the mood, but Burgess can convincingly switch between the extremes as easily as she changes shoes.

There are a few minor things that make this show not perfect.

It is a bit short, sitting at around 45 minutes instead of the advertised 60, but Full Time Ex-Lover does make the most of those 45 minutes. Some of the time jumps between scenes aren’t perfectly conveyed, instead taking a few seconds to register.

But these are minor things — overall, Full Time Ex-Lover is a joy to watch; the many highs of the show swamp the few lows.

Also, there was a lot more rolling around on the floor than I expected.