You look at your watch, clock the time, and the past is already a memory as you hurtle towards an uncertain future where death is always lying in wait.
In a Buenos Aires music hall in 1974 two Russian emigre actors are preparing for a performance on an oppressively hot night. Outside on the streets a coup d'etat is about to take place; inside the actors play out their tragicomedy, struggling against their own demons, a past that holds them in a grip and the black hole of the future.
A beautiful pas de deux turns into a life-and-death struggle; skeletons dance, the devil is abroad, a body swings like a hanged man, a girl gyrates, a clown lights a sparkler in a severed arm and the telephone rings and rings, an ominous reminder of the outside world.
If Hieronymus Bosch had known burlesque, this is what he would have painted. It is all twitching legs and anguished flailing arms, humanity reduced to these desperate survivors bound by their pasts and their premonition of the future.
This is an astonishing piece of physical theatre; rich almost to the point of sensory overload, full of the opera of life and the terrible desolation of the soul. It is almost absurdly ambitious, operating at the point where slapstick and despair collide head on and become mangled together. It is not always a pretty sight, but it is a compelling one.
· Until August 30. Box office: 0131-558 3853.
