A bloke stands on a bare stage telling us about a holiday he took in Chile more than 15 years ago. It sounds like the definition of dullness, but an hour and 20 minutes later you are yearning for more.
Quite what makes Peter Searles such a riveting story teller is hard to put a finger on. Maybe it's the way he drops in wonderfully surreal details - hundreds of poor people shuffling along on one shoe to Pinochet's birthday parade (they only get the other one after they've sung "Happy Birthday Papa" to him) - or the fact that his tales never quite go the way you expect. He loves and leaves the beautiful girl Elizabeth and her child to the tender mercies of the secret police and ends up unwittingly becoming a hero of Chile's most famous eco-warrior guerrilla raid.
All the usual political tourist stuff is here, as naive Gringo assumptions are trumped by the strange compromises of living a "normal life" in Chile. There is also the weirdness of the place being a little bit of England, or at least Europe. Forget the death squads, the most chilling episode was an evening he spent with upper class friends who idolised Mrs Thatcher. How the blood froze.
Till August 27. Box office: 0131-667 2212.
