Edinburgh Fringe 2022: Fata Morgana at Pleasance at EICC

The appellation Fata Morgana refers to the Italian term for Morgan le Fay, the medieval sorceress from Arthurian legends; it has also become a term used to describe a mirage. Thus, it is apt as the title for this show, as the entire experience feels akin to watching a mirage of sorts, created by Nico the sorceress herself. 

From the moment Margherita Remotti steps onto the stage as German-born model and singer Nico, she draws viewers into a strange, hallucinogenic world. Flashing lights and changing patterns illuminate the wall behind her as she effuses poetry and songs. Including renditions of I’ll Be Your Mirror and Le Petit Chevalier, Remotti’s impressions of Nico’s famously rasping, baritone voice are spot-on. Her voice, along with the images that flash intermittently behind her, creates a haunting atmosphere that is fitting to the tragic and disturbed life of the woman known as “Andy Warhol’s muse”.

Born Christa Päffgen in Cologne, the woman who would go on to become Nico suffered a terrible childhood, as explored by Remotti in Fata Morgana. She recalls the death of her father in the war, raging against Hitler for taking him from her, and the fear that she felt as bombs rained down. She speaks to her long-dead mother, sometimes in English and sometimes in German, telling her not to be afraid. In a particularly disturbing scene, she reenacts her rape by an American soldier as a teenager, asking the disembodied perpetrator whether he viewed her as a woman or a child while committing this act. 

Her troubled youth continues into a troubled adulthood, riddled by loneliness and addiction. In the one-woman show, Remotti’s musician-it-girl desperately pleads with the audience for help looking after her only child, a son called Ari. “Just give him some vodka,” she suggests and conducts a lesson in how to sing him a German lullaby that sounds more like a funeral dirge. The actor’s poignant performance makes clear the desperation and dissipation of the later years of Nico’s life. Once a model for Coco Chanel and quintessential image of glamour, she comes to rue her former beauty as a curse that kept her from being taken seriously. 

In this exploration of a volatile and desolate existence, Remotti manages to inspire both fear and pity. She speaks to the way Nico’s many losses – of her father, of her lover, Jim Morrison, of her son in a way – propelled her further into profligacy. She does this with such sincerity and misery that it is easy to believe that the woman onstage is experiencing these tragedies all over again as the audiences watches.

Overall, this show is a painfully honest reenactment of a troubled life. Yet, in its depiction of Nico’s hardships and the first-person account it gives of her life, Fata Morgana manages to lend sympathy. It gives agency to a woman who, in life, was constantly appropriated and abandoned by various men as their lover or their muse.

Madison Sotos

Fata Morgana is at Pleasance at EICC from 27^th August until 28^th August 2022. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.

For further information about Edinburgh Fringe 2022 visit the festival website here.

Watch a trailer for the production here: