Grimm goes gothic in this gloriously twisted and inventive modern fairytale in which all is not quite what it seems. Theodore is a writer, albeit one who only seems able to write his best-selling stories in the arctic conditions of his fridge. But his life suddenly takes an even more bizarre twist when he starts spewing up strange creatures who threaten him with "the authorities" before scuttling into the skirting board.
Could the key to these mysterious, creepy happenings lie in Theodore's past, and particularly in a school trip to the mountains that he took many years ago with his classmates from St Peter's on the Hill primary school - a learning establishment whose pupils were all strange and different from other children? What exactly does Mrs H from the downstairs flat know about him? Does Theodore really have reason to fear for his life or is he just cracking up, as his wife Adele suspects?
Vanishing Point's brilliant visual show is like a living nightmare, a children's fantastical drawing brought to life. It infests the subconscious. This story of imagination snatching and stealing from the dead wheedles its way into your brain with its mixture of finger and shadow puppetry, weird music and beautiful macabre images and its own stolen references to film and theatre. It looms over you like a monstrous shadow. It fills you up, just as the hollow Theodore had to find a way to fill himself.
This is a wonderfully ambitious and assured hour of expressionistic theatre from a company of vision and immense talent. It is a singular act of the imagination that has its end in its beginning and which explores the nature of creativity, the way we tell stories and our darkest fears with the lightest of touches.
· Until August 28. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
