Scotland

Tell Me – Summerhall Dissection Room

The Dissection Room at Summerhall is a fascinating space, double height and voluminous, and Tell Me certainly knows how to celebrate that verticality.

At its centre stands a giant open metal cube. Inside that sits another, and another, a Russian doll of skeletal geometry which performers Sadiq Ali, Phoebe Knight and Jonah Russell climb through, hang from, rotate and send tumbling across its different surfaces.

There is something of the rolling of dice about it too. During the AIDS crisis, whether you received that positive diagnosis could seem like the biggest roll of the dice imaginable.

Tell Me moves between that crisis and our contemporary understanding of HIV. The dramaturgy is often beautifully handled. Radio announcements report the emergence of this frightening new disease, television broadcasts intrude, and telephone calls or letters between characters and their mothers bring something intensely personal into the wider history.

One sequence, as a character is clearly dying and eventually dies, is particularly poignant.

The cubes themselves provide some of the production’s most interesting imagery. Structures sit within structures, spinning and turning independently, suggesting time moving onwards, bodies within bodies and perhaps even the chemistry taking place within them.

Diagnosis is reduced to something brutally simple. A small, solid red cube, almost Rubik’s Cube-sized, signifies HIV positive. Later comes its blue counterpart, representing the medication that can suppress the virus and transform that diagnosis from what was once effectively a death sentence into a manageable condition.

The physical performances are extraordinary. Ali’s Chinese pole work is exceptional, while Knight and Russell bring tremendous gymnastic strength, balance and control. Bodies climb, fall and suspend themselves within this enormous three-dimensional frame, and here Tell Me is at its strongest.

I was less convinced by some of the storytelling. The movement between historical periods isn’t always sufficiently clear, and some of the more surreal elements complicate a narrative that doesn’t really need complicating. There is enough power in the reality of these lives to play much of this considerably straighter.

So, Tell Me didn’t completely blow me away. But it is intelligent, thoughtful physical theatre containing some genuinely poignant moments and tremendous circus work.

And in the magnificent height of Summerhall’s Dissection Room, those extraordinary spinning cubes have certainly found the right home.

Playing until August 31st 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026TELLME

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 19th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating: