The Traverse’s 4PLAY has form, a new-writing pressure cooker where short pieces are aired, tested, and occasionally launched into something much larger. Last year’s Colours Run was proof enough that this collective can produce work that grows real legs. This year’s quartet, though, is more uneven, with flashes of real quality offset by structural quirks and the odd misjudgement.
The evening opens with Chips by Ruaraidh Murray, a micro-play in every sense. Running no more than seven or eight minutes, it dramatises a real-life Edinburgh gangland robbery, not for cash, but for microchips, with a premise that promises much more than the piece has time to deliver. There’s energy and intent here, but it barely gets started before it’s over. As an amuse-bouche, it’s intriguing, as drama, it’s too fleeting to properly engage with character or consequence. You leave feeling not dissatisfied so much as unfinished.
Next comes Brace by Geraldine Lang, a more overtly character-driven two-hander set among scaffolders. There’s a strong visual idea at play, with the actors physically erecting scaffold on stage, a piece of slapstick business that initially raises a smile but soon becomes distracting. More problematic is the language. Anyone who’s spent time on a building site will know that scaffolders speak a dialect rich in profanity, rhythm, and gallows humour. True, the pair are still just apprentices, but even so, the dialogue feels curiously sanitised, never quite convincing as the product of that world. It’s a reminder that writing working-class environments convincingly requires immersion as much as imagination.
Then comes the interval, after roughly 25 minutes of stage time. This is, frankly, baffling. It may be the shortest pre-interval stretch I’ve encountered in years. Barely time for the seat to get uncomfortable before the audience is ushered back out to the bar for another quarter of an hour. Structurally, it breaks momentum and raises questions about pacing across the whole evening.
Post-interval, things lift considerably with Sunday Palms by Sean Langtry, the standout of the night. Langtry was memorable in last year’s Colours Run, a piece that went on to a full Fringe life and awards, and this new work shows the same assurance. Here, Langtry performs his own writing to excellent effect, matched by a finely judged and equally assured performance from Daniel Campbell. Pinter-esque in its slow release of information, Sunday Palms hinges on a reunion between two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a decade. One lives in a sleek flat overlooking the Meadows, emblematic of a life that has clearly moved up, the other arrives dressed in black, gloved, enigmatic, claiming to work for the government.
What works beautifully is the tension generated by what’s left unsaid. Fragments of their shared past surface gradually, and the audience is left constantly recalibrating what it thinks this meeting is really about, and how it might end. At around 25 minutes, it feels complete rather than truncated, and holds attention throughout. Whether it needs further development is an open question, as presented, it already feels fully formed.
The evening closes with Hunt by Andrea McKenzie, a darkly comic and highly enjoyable piece. Performed by McKenzie herself alongside Deborah Whyte, both actors bring formidable stage presence and comic precision to the piece. Two women of a certain age have fled AI-ravaged cities for a Highland hideaway, an apocalypse of sorts, though the immediate concern seems to be whether they remembered to bring a kettle. The tone is playful and anarchic, with songs, dances, and a knowing mockery of survivalist tropes, but there’s real bite beneath the humour. One character has lost both sons when an AI drone destroyed their house after they attempted to hack the system, lending the piece genuine emotional weight.
The plot veers gleefully into the unexpected, with plans to trap men for their seed, and then kill them, complete with nets, guns, and grim practicality. It’s bold, funny, unsettling, and oddly joyous. As with much good dark comedy, you laugh first and then realise what you’re laughing at.
Overall, this year’s 4PLAY is a mixed bag. Structurally awkward, occasionally undercooked, but redeemed by two strong pieces and several standout performances that remind us exactly why the Traverse continues to invest in new writing. Not everything here works, but when it does, it points clearly toward what might come next
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 12th December 2025
North West End UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr 35mins