EDFRINGE REVIEW: Steve Burns: Alive (Benson Drive Production)

Steve Burns: Alive – ★★★★★ – Transcendent 

Benson Drive Productions
5-30 Aug
Review by Rebecca Mahar
 
Steve looks into the camera and says, “Can you help me?”
 
Steve Burns looks at us and says, “Can you help me?”
 
Steve Burns: Alive looks into the soul of a generation that grew up on a passive aggressive blue dog and a “weird happy jackass boy in a cartoon house,” and reminds us of the humanity on either side of the camera, of the profound connections we made on Our Show, and of the disconnects that can plague even something as monumental as that. Alive introduces us not just to Steve, but to Steve Burns, the man behind the green-striped shirt, in all his imperfect humanity, and in how living with two Steves and the persistent rumours of his own death have shaped him.

Steve Burns: Alive. Pic: Rebecca J Michelson

From 1996 to 2001, Steve Burns was also “Steve,” the adult-shaped but childlike host of Blues Clues, an American children’s television show that introduced the revolutionary idea of including its audience in the narrative, combining education with participation. Existing against a blue void, Steve was the only human in an animated world. Speaking directly to his audience, he guided them through the finding of clues and the solving of puzzles, and always asked for help as though they were the only ones in the world who could.
 
Almost immediately, even though he was appearing on the show, rumours began to circulate that Steve was dead. Car accident, heroin overdose, replaced by a clone; all sorts of outlandish theories that never quite disappeared despite repeated proof-of-life appearances. Things only got worse when Steve left the show: the rumours ramped up again, suddenly being only Steve Burns but still not being sure which Steve he was supposed to be, and dealing with the undiagnosed clinical depression with which he had been living during the show, that, as he says, “the world told me I was dead so hard I started to believe it.”

Steve Burns: Alive. Pic: Rebecca J Michelson

Steve Burns is not dead. Steven Burns is alive, so alive it hurts.
 
The show begins with Steve on a screen, the way we all first met him, this time from backstage with a cry of “Wait, it’s you! You’re here! You’re really here!” But before long he emerges, three dimensional, from behind the curtain and into the light, and confesses that really being here is much less comfortable for him than being behind the camera, talking to us through the screen. The statement naturally garners laughs, but it’s an early-planted seed for a recurring theme. 
 
As Steve guides us through his journey from getting the job to realising it meant more than just a job and how his “entire life was about to be changed by this beautiful blue void,” to realising the problem of Steve and Steve Burns, to leaving the show and at last asking for help as himself, his most vulnerable moments are spoken to a camera, which feeds to the onstage screen. Up until shortly before the end, when things become too much, between reducing his audience to bouts of uncontrollable laughter, Steve returns to his comfort zone.
 
Steve Burns: Alive. Pic: Rebecca J Michelson

But it doesn’t matter. He’s still there. We’re still there. The connection we made on Our Show is still there. When Steve speaks into the camera, we know it’s real. We know he’s alive. The final twist of the show proves it all, transcending time, media, and the parasociality of it all. Steve Burns is a master storyteller, leaping from hilarity to hush in an instant, making Alive a wild roller coaster of an hour, packed with so much life and exuberance you can’t help but fall in love with him all over again— but not just with Steve. With Steve Burns, the other Steve, the one we didn’t really know back then, but who has chosen to introduce himself to us now. Steve, the one and only.
 
Steve’s not a kid anymore, and neither are we. I laughed, I cried, I snorted, I remembered how it was Steve who came online in the midst of the pandemic on the 25th anniversary of Our Show and told us how proud he was of us and how he never, ever forgot about us. And it turns out when he looked into that lens, we were all there for him, too.
 
Running time: One hour with no interval
Venue: Belly Button at Underbelly Cowgate (Venue 61), 66 Cowgate EH1 1JX
5-30 August 2026 (not 17)
Time: 5:20pm
Tickets: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/steve-burns-alive

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