festtheatre Dark Matter
HHHHH In a hidden garden in a nondescript street off Leith Walk, shadows flicker. Unearthly mist swirls around a knotted tree. Lights catch the undercarriage of plants, throwing dark shapes across the grass. A young girl enters wearing nothing but an oversized coat. She is here to meet her married lover. If the mise-enscène doesn’t give it away, the portentous soundtrack confirms that all is not well in this patch of Edinburgh. And for the first three quarters of this site-specific show, this is the most engaging thing about it. This one-woman show is big on atmosphere, small on plot. There is little in the girl’s story—her parents’ deaths, her mental breakdown, her relationship with a married
man—to explain why the audience is sitting in someone’s back garden wearing headphones and jet black ponchos. Once the initial thrill of the space fades, the artfully elliptical script and impressive acting could easily have worked in a theatre. Is this theatre’s equivalent of 3D technology in cinema – shiny bells and whistles that add
NORTHERN STAGE PRESENTS
nothing to the storytelling? And then the twist comes. The half-formed sentences and theatrical artifice become hauntingly concrete. Her story is not the kind we initially thought. Dark matters indeed. The ultimate revelation just about justifies all that goes before it. It saves the show from the ignominy of
being upstaged by swirling dry ice. In the end everything combines to create a spooky, spine-tingling confection of death, love and darkness that leaves you wary of shadows on the way home. [Edd McCracken] Summerhall, 10:00pm – 10:40pm, 15–24 Aug, not 18, £12
WORLD PREMIERE
The Times
A Younger Theatre
with
Billy Hayes
“Open-ended, easygoing and convivial” The Scotsman
Box Office 0131 558 3047 Book Online northernstage.co.uk
www.festmag.co.uk
23-25 August at 9pm (ends 10pm) 6552 Festival www.gildedballoon.co.uk Highlights Box Office 0131 622
.com
Illustration: Anthony D’Avino
UNTIL 24 AUGUST (not 20)10pm Venue 73 NORTHERN STAGE AT ST STEPHEN’S
August 20 – 26 | edinburgh festival guide 2013 fest 49