Miriam (Edie Campbell) loves to bake pie, apple pie to be exact. Baked with the apples from the tree in her garden that she lovingly nurtured, to ensure that the apples in her pie were of the best quality. They should only be picked in September for the best apple pie…Robert loved her apple pie more than anything!
Robert is Miriam’s son. Robert is in prison on death row, and his execution has been organised for midnight on that very day. His request for his last meal is for his mother to make the apple pie that he loves so much. For Miriam, this request stirs up a tsunami of emotions, as she stands in the prison kitchen with her ingredients to make the homemade pie for her son.
Written by Jennifer Fawcett, and produced by Lynchpin Theatre Company, this solo performance focuses on the torment that Miriam experiences as she comes to terms with the fact that her son is not the little boy that she fed pie to when he was young. He is a grown man who has not made the best use of his life, and the question that she wrestles with is – was it my fault?
I will not give too much away about further details of the play, as you must go to see it for yourself. The pacing of the play reveals the details slowly, almost as though Miriam is gradually acknowledging to herself, the person that her son is, rather than the thought of him that she has kept as a monument in her own mind. Directed by Claire Parker, this decision to move slowly with the details, hitting the viewer gradually with another piece of the puzzle builds up the tension, and when the pie is finally made, Miriam realises that there is nothing more that she can do for her son.
Campbell has been handed an incredible script, and excellent direction, and her on-stage presence begins as comforting; a mother making a pie for her son, it’s his favourite, how lovely! But the essence of the performance comes from her gradual realisation, that she no longer needs to be the strong matriarch, and that she can now admit that her son is not a good person, and that she must finally accept this and let him go.
The whole play was an emotional experience, because of the excellent writing, direction, performance, but also the staging, all fed in to it. As a fellow human being, I felt her pain. Unwittingly being placed in this predicament, and it did not go away overnight, her son was on death row for twenty-two years!
I do urge you to go along to see Apples In Winter at Venue 29, Paradise In The Vault which is running until 30th August (not 23rd) 10.230am (1hr 10mins) – https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on?search=true&text=Apples%20in%20Winter
Reviewer: Caroline Worswick
Reviewed: 22nd August 2026
North West End UK/Theatre Muse UK Rating: 5 stars
