Salty Brine: How Strange It Is (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show) ★★★★★

Salty Brine is sui generis among entertainers, a dazzling cabaret performer who crafts shows that challengingly incorporate three disparate strands — a piece of literature, opera, or film; a beloved album; and autobiographical elements (often his long-kept diary) — to create an evening of entertainment like no other. The Fringe First committee finally gave Brine his first First this past Friday, an overdue recognition that is well deserved, unlike many of the Firsts handed out this August.

Salty Brine: How Strange It Is (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show) at Summerhall is only the most recent edition of the Living Record Collection, Brine’s ongoing series that, according to his website, “takes incredible albums and twists them in style and form until they are at once familiar and foreign nostalgic and new.” Prior albums Brine has tackled include David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Weezer’s Pinkerton, and, most recently at Edinburgh Fringe, Annie Lennox’s Diva, which Brine transformed into the glorious, challenging These Are The Contents of my Head.

This new show, devoted to Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, is slightly different in that Neutral Milk Hotel is possibly the least-known band or artist covered in the Living Record Collection. Formed by Jeff Mangum in the late ‘80s, Neutral Milk Hotel produced two albums; 1998’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was their second and last studio album, a record with no hit singles that gained traction over time on the internet.

Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl was an important influence for Mangum on the album, and Brine’s show continues that run, combining stories about his first love from his diaries with Anne’s diary entries about her growing feelings for Peter van Pels (called Peter van Daan in her diary), the teenage boy who hid in the secret annex with his family and Anne’s.

It’s an unexpected exploration of Frank’s diary, one that highlights some of the positive, all-too-human moments Anne had with Peter before their families were discovered by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps, where they both perished. Given their eventual fates, this approach could feel distasteful, but Brine is far too thoughtful and clever to let that happen; the show lets the audience see Anne and Peter as real people who should be remembered for how they lived in addition to how they died.

Brine ultimately asks: “How does a soul travel?” And as you contemplate that query, you’re regaled with the hard-working Brine’s wonderful song interpretations and other engaging anecdotes, all supported by a fierce four-piece band led by music director Nate Weida. Director Max Reuben skillfully keeps this wild train ride on its tracks, and you’d be wise to buy a ticket and climb aboard, as this might very well be the best show of this year’s festival.