Writer: Ollie Adewusi
Director: Ray Shell
With the hopes of turning his show into a TV series, Ollie Adewusi plays Vice Verser, a rapper who’s become a victim of cancel culture. Sporting a couple of Brits and with a few platinum-selling albums behind him, Vice Verser is now looking at a life of ignominy. Approached by a dodgy cryptocurrency outfit, the rapper agreed to promote the new Verse Purse in a single. His fans invested, but they never saw their money again. Cancelled begins with a shamefaced Vice returning to his hometown of Bournemouth.
It is possible to imagine this on TV with each episode charting our hero’s failures to reach the dizzy heights of celebrity again. There’s something very British about it, from Basil Fawlty’s inept attempts to run a hotel to David Brent’s incompetent endeavours to be a good boss in The Office. Each episode of Cancelled could shower down more humiliations on Vice Verser, but the audience would love him all the same.
Playing a handful of characters, Adewusi records Vice Verser’s strategies to return to stardom. He goes on a TikTok channel to apologise, he stages a fake intervention to make him look like a wholesome hero, and he meets an actor, also fallen foul of cancel culture, to get some advice. Each plan goes disastrously wrong, and the rapper discovers he’s even more of a persona non grata than before.
Adewusi tells his story clearly, and there are some funny lines peppered throughout, such as Vice being called ‘The Wolf of Wankerville’ by someone on social media. But there could be more jokes, and there surely will be as Cancelled is still in its early days of development. Although the show only plays for two nights at Camden Fringe, further performances will help Adewusi and director Ray Shell discover what works and what doesn’t and to bring a little more pace to proceedings.
Reviewed on 13 August 2026
Camden Fringe 2026 runs until 30 August
