What Remains
Traverse @ University of Edinburgh Medical School Anatomy Department
**
You Once Said Yes
Underbelly
****
Allotment
Assembly Inverleith Allotments
***
If there's one thing Edinburgh revels in, it's getting audiences out of conventional theatrical spaces for shows. There have previously been productions in cars, toilets and lifts, to name but three, and this year sees a glut of similarly experimental, variously successful offerings.
What Remains, from site-specific Scottish specialists Grid Iron, is big on site but weak on specificity. It should have worked a treat, setting a one-man piece about a murderous piano maestro in the dark and evocative spaces of the anatomy department of the university medical school but instead it's barely possible to fathom - or care - what's going on. There's far too much dead time for a 60-minute show and even when performer David Paul Jones plays hauntingly in the gloaming, we're twitchy to move on.
A glaringly missed opportunity.
Infinitely more fruitful is You Once Said Yes, an interactive one-on-one piece from Look Left Look Right that takes the city of Edinburgh itself as its backdrop. I set out alone from the Underbelly only to be accosted by an Icelandic backpacker looking for her hostel. Could I help? In Spanish?
Saying " yes" - a simple answer with profound consequences - sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole of wonder and surprise, as I bounced from encounter to encounter with a host of characters and places, not all of them as well-intentioned as the tranquil few minutes with a young mother of a Down's syndrome child in the calm of St Giles's Cathedral. Every day, this lovely show reminds us, is a series of infinite possibilities, to which we just have to remain open.
Anyone planning to catch Allotment, set alfresco on a working allotment, should hasten there ASAP, before the two game performers are hospitalised with pneumonia due to their show-must-go-on-in-all-weathers attitude. Jules Horne has crafted a sweet but slight story of two sisters whose major life events occur on or around the family patch but she could, if you'll pardon the pun, have dug deeper. Even so, 45 minutes in the pouring rain felt amply sufficient at the time.
What Remains, until Aug 28 (0131 228 1404, http://www.traverse.co.uk/). You Once, until Aug 29 (0844 545 8252, underbelly.co.uk). Allotment, until Aug 28 (0131 623 3030, assemblyfestival.com).
What Remains
Traverse @ University of Edinburgh Medical School Anatomy Department
