En route
Traverse
****
Sub Rosa
Hill Street Theatre
****
Each year, the race is on to find new and exciting venues in Edinburgh. En Route, a "live art event" from Melbourne-based company One Step at a Time Like This, niftily circumvents the competition by taking the entire city as its performance space. It kits out audience members with an iPod and sends them off one by one on a quirky metropolitan treasure hunt.
Following instructions both from the iPod and from our mobile phones, we wend our lengthy way along roads and alleyways. "Every walk down the street is important — it’s an opportunity" is one of the more sensible statements from the wafty ambient soundtrack, yet it’s impossible not to feel newly energised and engaged with our surroundings, especially when we’re asked to follow a series of arrows chalked on the pavement.
I certainly responded to the city commercially, discovering a number of intriguing shops, but the greatest delight comes via a most surprising — and spectacular — panoramic view. For a few precious minutes, En Route lifts us high above the mayhem of the festival city, making us stop to draw breath.
Innovative writer/director David Leddy has found the perfect location for his gothic Victorian promenade piece Sub Rosa, which begins, suitably and eerily, at the witching hour each night.
In Edinburgh’s Masonic Lodge, we walk around a series of dimly-lit rooms to hear various members of a sinister company of music hall artistes recount the macabre fate of one of their number, 12-year-old Flora. These deliciously creepy characters are compelling narrators, instantly at home in their unnerving surroundings. I found myself simultaneously thrilling to the whole immersive experience and longing to escape from its claustrophobic clutches into the chilly Edinburgh air.
En Route until August 29, Sub Rosa until August 30. Both 0131 226 0000. edfringe.com
