Part of the five-day long Edinburgh Horror Festival, at The Banshee Labyrinth just off Edinburgh’s ghostly Royal Mile. A suitably dark and stormy night saw me head out for a Labyrinthine hat trick of horror.
First up, written by Daniel Orejon for his theatre company Crested Fools, this one-woman show looses its way a little by being way too wordy for its own good. Often the simplest stories told well work out the best. A flow chart showing all of the characters featured in the stories and their relationships would have been handy.
A chance meeting in a car park brings together two old schoolteacher friends, and soon they are recounting stories from the past, but these are not cosy school stories, these are tales of blood-weeping daughters, abusive relationships, a foul-mouthed mother chained by gossamer threads to her tv, of murder and possession.
The narrator explains that her stories are like ‘shedding my skin and seeing the tender red underneath, and the ‘the pen just takes the reigns and goes wherever it want or needs’.
Whilst the acting is solid by Erin Elkin, and the writing by Orejon is expressive and effective in each of the set pieces, there is a lack of connection and no overarching allegorical storyline that can bring this to a satisfactory tied-up conclusion.
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 26th October 2023
North West End UK Rating:
Rating: 2 out of 5.
