All These Pretty Things – Camden Fringe / Etcetera Theatre, London
In All These Pretty Things, Tracey Yarad transforms personal heartbreak into a cathartic evening of songs and storytelling.
All These Pretty Things
It’s easy to imagine Tracey Yarad at a piano in the corner of a hotel bar, chatting to the regulars between songs, reading a room without seeming to try. That’s not to diminish what she’s doing here at all. If anything, it’s what gives All These Pretty Things its edge: a kind of disarming ease, as if you’ve stumbled into something informal and low-key, only to realise you’re being handed a story that’s quietly devastating.
The format is simple (spoken word and original songs, plus a tiny non-sequitur into juggling), but it’s not confessional theatre in the usual sense. Yarad isn’t here to perform her pain. She has crafted something more deliberate. The structure moves naturally, slipping between anecdote and melody in a way that feels conversational, almost casual, until you realise just how tightly Yarad and co-writer/director Tessa Souter have put it together.
She has a beautiful voice: warm, full of texture, with a clear jazz sensibility. The songs are deftly written (book by Yarad and Souter, songs by Yarad, some co-written with Rachel Brady, Abi Tapia or Amber Woodruff), each one revealing a different emotional register. Together they show off a serious musical range both vocally and stylistically. As well as setting the scene and mirroring the emotional journey of the story, there’s something cleaner and more distilled embedded in the songs, a sense of control earned the hard way.
And although you may go in knowing the broad strokes – husband leaves, teenage goddaughter, heartbreak – the moment that truth lands in the room, it still stings. There was at least one audible gasp the night I was there. Yarad doesn’t milk the drama, but she doesn’t avoid it either. She just lays it out, and lets the audience sit with it.
Betrayal and Renewal
What follows is less about betrayal than its fallout. Yarad describes it as the dismemberment of a marriage, an image that feels brutal but accurate. And the show doesn’t shy away from that emotional wreckage. What’s striking is how viscerally she conveys that experience without tipping into indulgence. This isn’t a show about being wronged; it’s about crawling through the aftermath and eventually standing up again.
It’s a strength that there’s no overt message or tidy takeaway. Yarad doesn’t offer us closure or redemption in a traditional sense. Instead, she charts a course from devastation to something steadier, and unmistakably forward-moving. You wouldn’t call it inspiring, exactly, because that implies a moral, and often a very twee thing to say to someone who has suffered. But it is heartening. There’s something deeply reassuring about seeing someone walk through fire and come out clearer, more self-possessed.
Still, there’s a slight tension in the piece, not in its content but in its tone. It leans toward the honesty and ease of a lounge set, with its understated musicality and fluid shifts between song and speech, but doesn’t fully commit to that cabaret intimacy. Nor does it push all the way into theatricality. There’s a version of this show that could go further in either direction (and perhaps hit even harder for it).
The music remains its strongest asset. Each song earns its place, often landing more forcefully than the spoken word passages. Not because the storytelling isn’t strong (it is), but because the music carries emotion that won’t sit neatly in anecdote. Yarad’s voice is key: it holds pain, defiance, humour and hindsight in equal measure.
Staged without frills in the intimate Etcetera space, All These Pretty Things doesn’t need embellishment. It’s honest, precise, and moving in a way that sneaks up on you. Camden Fringe is a great vehicle for unexpected and intriguing formats, and this is a great example. Just one person, a piano, and the hard-earned grace of someone who’s lived through it and figured out how to turn it into art.
Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5
All These Pretty Things on as part of Camden Fringe until 31 July 2025. More info and tickets here. The work has also taken the form of a book and an album – see Yarad’s website for more details.