When the heart is walled up, it turns to stone. If you are forced to live behind walls, you petrify.
Fabrik Potsdam's ace dance-theatre piece was created just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it is the wall that dominates the stage, a snake of bricks that separates the two protagonists. It begins with one of the men attempting to breach the wall, the other repeatedly repulsing him.
Over the next 50 minutes the wall is dismantled and rebuilt and destroyed again - a constant metaphor for the shifting relationship of the two men, former antagonists who discover friendship and an affecting intimacy. There is something beautiful in the curl of two bodies in the curve of bricks, the impact of flesh on stone.
Sometimes in the theatre simpler ideas produce better results. That is the case here: one idea - the wall - is embellished and explored for its myriad meanings, political and personal. What I love about this performance by Benno Voorham and Wolfgang Hoffman is its unaffected honesty - and the sheer sweat of it.
Bricks are heavy things to play around with. This show is irresistibly playful but it never forgets that breaking down barriers is hard work.
Until August 27. Box office: 0131-558 3853.
