Not many Edinburgh shows kick off with you being handed a steaming hot cuppa and a freshly baked scone smeared with homemade damson jam. Nor do you often see other members of the audience bearing bags of their own homegrown veg and discussing leek seedlings. But then not every show is set on the director's very own allotment. Even on the fringe, where novelty settings are now almost a cliche, there is something delightful about perching between courgettes, strawberries, beetroots and raspberries for Jules Horne's new play. It's called, appropriately enough, Allotment.
Directed by Nutshell Theatre's Kate Nelson (who has had to sacrifice her prized globe artichoke bed to accommodate actors and audience), the drama centres on two sisters whose rivalries, traumas and inner lives are worked out on their allotment, a place where people come to dig deep, bury what they wish to hide, and cast out – with ferocity – the things they don't like.
The idea came to Nelson during last year's festival when, after days spent seeing show after show, she would come back to her allotment, in Inverleith Park, to "do some watering and pick some beans". It became, she says, quoting TS Eliot, a still point in a turning world. But the patch, she began to notice, has its own dramas. "People do come here to dig furiously, to work things out," she says.
The show is deliberately earthy: there's no lighting, and certainly no protection from the elements. "It doesn't rely on fancy tricks," says Nelson. The set, needless to say, has been grown from seed, although "we were supposed to have a mass of sweetpeas at the back, near the fence, and not one germinated. My neighbours on the allotment are scandalised."
Nelson's fellow gardeners and the city council, which owns the land, have been supportive, she says, though a stern announcement at the start warns visitors not to pinch strawberries or tomatoes from other people's plots. She hopes to take the show on tour, working with community groups who will grow the stage wherever she wants to take it. Let's hope they have a bit more luck with those sweetpeas.
