Deborah Frances White: The Cult Following

By this point into the Fringe you will have lost count of how many times you have been assailed by flyerers, but is it more or less tiresome than being bothered by Jehovah's Witnesses? It apparently takes 5000 hours for this religious group to convert someone (making one wonder what the ratio stats are for flyers to audience members), one of the many intriguing facts you will learn from Deborah Frances-White.

Given that we have all been door-stepped by the members of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, it is as, Frances-White points out, surprising how little we know about these doom-mongering vegans, as she portrays them, with their very specific concept of heaven. Frances-White herself speaks from considerable experience.

Vulnerable and lonely in her childhood she was ripe for recruitment into a cult, but she soon started having her doubts, especially after she was persuaded against going to university. The story of how she finally dropped out is one of two anecdotes told as monologue flashbacks interspersed with her more free-form, and occasionally interactive, delve into the Jehovah's Witness psyche. It’s a study that remembers to see the lighter side and there is much deliberation the religion’s apparent reverence of fruit. Smart, funny and interesting, Frances-White's problem is that she has too much to say, trying to get a two-for-one out of the monologue conceit and elsewhere telling her story in too much of a scrapbook form.