EDINBURGH 2026: Review: AMANDA KNOX: CARTWHEEL, Gilded Balloon
Amanda Knox: Cartwheel runs at Edfringe until 17 August
“Welcome to the most controversial show at the Fringe” is an undeniably strong start from Amanda Knox. The media has been ablaze since the day Knox’s debut comedy show Cartwheel was announced, and in the last week there has been a petition circulated trying to cancel her run at the Gilded Balloon. There have been a lot of headlines written by people who haven’t seen the show. So what exactly is the show?
Amanda Knox is a mother of two young children who still faces daily trauma from what she went through in her 20s, nearly two decades later. While studying abroad in Italy in 2007, her roommate Meredith Kercher was murdered, and Amanda was convicted of the crime but acquitted and released after serving four years in prison.
Cartwheel is not by any means, jokes about murder as some media outlets have claimed. It’s a story about how to tell her four-year-old daughter what happened, in an age-appropriate way. Her young daughter is fearless and friendly but Knox has some reservations because she sees a trusting innocence in the girl that she once had herself too. She talks about her own close relationship with her mother and what she went through while her firstborn daughter was imprisoned in another country.
The issue with Cartwheel is billing it as standup comedy. The jokes that she does throw in achieve polite murmurs at best. They’re not offensive or inappropriate at all; they’re just not very funny. Cartwheel works well as a storytelling show and would be better served listed as theatre or spoken word. It’s very apparent there’s a theatre kid inside Amanda Knox, and I’m surprised that a one-woman show wasn’t her first port of call.
As she takes us through her story, she cleans up the mess on stage. Baskets of laundry and strewn toys cover the room and she folds clothes and picks up toys whilst addressing the audience. She’s not afraid to address the things that have been said about her: that people know she was acquitted, but she is apparently guilty of “the vibes being off”. Knox makes a valid point that in the mid 00s quirky girls were in, and it was cool to be weird. All of her traits were used as evidence of her guilt.
When Knox begins to talk about her friend Meredith Kercher there is a clear shift in the room. She speaks of her respectfully and talks about her kindness and caring nature. This section feels very separate to the rest of the hour.
It’s not tasteless, it’s not insensitive but it’s not funny. Amanda Knox has been through a significant trauma which still has a big impact on her life but she says she views herself as the lucky one. Cartwheel is an undeniably interesting show which has been well written- it's just really not a comedy.
Photo credit: Andrew Perry
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