If ever a show had cult written all over it, it's Periplum Tree's invitation for you to meet the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, once dubbed "the wickedest man in the world". An audience of just 24 is led in pairs by torchlight into the vaults of St Stephen's Church and into hell.
There is an awful lot about Crowley that seems sad rather than really bad. It can't do much for your emotional development growing up with a mum who breaks the news of your beloved father's death by telling you that he will spend the rest of your life in a coffin and refers to you as "the beast from Revelations". Mind you, perhaps Crowley did go a little too far in killing the cat and blowing up his school. Soon the "beastly, boasting and unholy" boy is up to things far, far nastier.
Theatre doesn't get more atmospheric than this show, which uses shadows, strobes and fireworks to terrific effect. It even smells and sounds exotic. It also, in a script that uses rhyming couplets and in Damian Wright's central performance, gets the balance right between the serious and the cheeky: this is a show that pops reputations and myths, beginning with a bang and ending with a fart. But the piece assumes far too much knowledge of Crowley and, in the end, it is a case of style overwhelming content.
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-558 3853.
