Alecs Simone: Camden Fringe performer profiles

Becoming a professional actor has always been a difficult path to choose. The harsh realities of the years of training, pitiful pay, and only being as good as your last performance are well known, and the profession can increasingly seem to be dominated by those with enough economic/nepotistic firepower to see them through.

Yet Camden Fringe, which runs to the end of this month, is packed with actors, singers, standups and small theatre companies putting on 450+ shows that are proving the dream of treading the boards is still very much alive for people from all walks of life – if you are willing to do the hard graft.

It’s a hot Saturday afternoon when we descend into The Courtyard Theatre to catch a performance of Swedish Furniture Store: The Musical, a quirky and hugely enjoyable show about life lessons learned from encounters in the one-way system of a flatpack warehouse.

Alecs Simone plays multiple roles in the romp, and with his flamboyant zeal he feels like a Fringe natural, but, as he tells us when we sit down afterwards, this is actually his first one.

“I saw the casting call and applied,” he says. “I do have an agent, but I also believe it’s good to look for your own gig and jobs. I almost didn’t go to the audition though, as I’d had a really bad day. It was due to happen at 6pm, and I thought I should just go home, but eventually said to myself: ‘okay, let’s wear the mask. Everything will be fine. Use this occasion to have fun, meet new people, dance… and I got the role. Later the director and the musical director said one of the reasons they chose me was because of my energy; because I turned up and was just like, ‘let’s do this.’”

His story highlights the precarious nature of getting cast or not, and the intangible magic of a good performance that can’t be forced, and can so easily be seen through.

“You want to give it everything,” agrees Alecs, “but at the same time, you don’t want to push it, because then you’re not being yourself, which casting directors will notice and you won’t be picked.”

After the show’s short run last week, he left with a positive view of the company, cast and the Fringe itself, marvelling at the rapid turnover of shows. “We performed two shows on Saturday, but in between there was a completely different show, so we had to move a lot of things out and back into place very quickly.”

As a young Italian, coming to chase his dreams in London was a big move, with all the usual challenges compounded by the geopolitical dramas of Brexit, Covid and the rest. He upped left Italy in 2022 after posting a video to Instagram declaring he was off, with no idea if he’d be back in a week, a year – or ever.

“London has the biggest landscape for film, theatre, concerts, music and the arts, if not in the world, then surely in Europe,” he says. “There’s so much going on, so much talent, that the level is very, very high. So, I told myself, if you want to be the best that you can be, you need to be what the best are – so just go there.”

With more shows and a film in the offing, the plan seems to be working.