Edinburgh's international festival is now engaged in a head-to-head battle with the hyper-inflated fringe. But it is in the former that one often finds the real experiment, as in this sensational production from Berlin's Schaubuhner which offers not only a radical adaptation of Racine's classical tragedy but also a great performance from Jutta Lampe.
The director, Luk Perceval, and his designer, Annette Kurz, have come up with an astonishing image: the play's five characters are seen atop a granite altar surrounded by broken bottles. The still centre of the action is Andromache, grieving for the dead Hector and fiercely protective of her young son. But she is passionately loved by her captor, Pyrrhus, who is himself adored by Hermione, in turn worshiped by Orestes. And observing this labyrinth of lust is Orestes' sexually equivocal chum, Pylades.
Perceval sees the play in geo-political terms: a clash between the unconditional eastern love of Andromache and the neurotically western passion of the rest. But the conflict is as much psychological as political. Jutta Lampe's Trojan widow is faithful to the memory of the past: she still remembers the smell of children's burned flesh on her clothes. The others are victims of a destructive love which expresses itself in extraordinary physical contortions.
Watching this hour-long production is like seeing the figures on a classical vase come to agonised life. Yvon Jansen's Hermione hangs over the side of the ridged altar smashing green bottles in desperation. Mark Waschke's Pyrrhus and Ronald Kukulies' Orestes engage in confrontations using Hermione's slumped body as if it were a buffer. And through it all the pinioned Lampe gazes at their distorted passion with contempt. Even the surtitled language has a flinty brutality that matches the action.
This may not be French classical tragedy as we normally understand it. But what Perceval has done is to physicalise Racine and to capture, in a confined setting, the all-powerful nature of erotic passion.
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
