BRIGHTON FRINGE REVIEW: SPLIT ENDS, Rotunda Theatre Brighton (Squeak)

In Split Ends, writer-performer Claudia Schnier blurs the lines between autobiography and artifice with an intensity that lingers long after the house lights come up. Billed as a part-stand-up, part-puppetry piece, this visceral one-woman show defies easy categorisation—and that’s part of its power.

At its core, Split Ends is an unflinching exploration of love and its all-consuming consequences, weaving together threads of abuse, addiction, and mental illness. What makes Claudia’s approach unique is her use of puppetry—animating household objects like a vacuum cleaner, a pair of tweezers, and scissors to represent characters and emotional states. It’s a striking technique and one that’s often quite uncomfortable to watch. Which, I suspect, is entirely the point.

The show is deliberately chaotic. There are times when it’s difficult to distinguish where Claudia the performer ends and 'Claudia' the character begins. It’s a disorienting effect, but one that speaks to the blurred boundaries of trauma and memory.

Schnier has an incredible sense of movement and understanding of her own physicality which elevates this piece to something almost poetic in its energy. And in the moments of quiet—when the noise recedes and the stage is held in silence – her performance holds remarkable emotional depth. Her eyes speak volumes.

Though marketed as incorporating elements of stand-up comedy, Split Ends is far more invested in its dramatic core. Yes, there are moments of levity—small flashes of humour that act as pressure valves in an otherwise tense narrative—but the show’s real weight lies in its complexity. It is a brave, nuanced, and at times graphic portrayal of lived experience, made all the more powerful by its roots in true events.

Split Ends doesn’t just tell a story—it invites us to sit in the messiness of it, to witness it without flinching. In doing so, Schnier has crafted a piece that is as unsettling as it is unforgettable.