Something may have been lost in the translation. Pritham Chakravarthy is an actor and political activist, who tells stories for the stage about India's poor and marginalised. She professes to be a street actor, not a stage actor - and certainly her 20-minute monologue on hijras, or eunuchs, is totally out of place in the gaudy upstairs room of the international festival's HQ. The first night audience is nonplussed: Chakravarthy haemorrhages punters, who may have expected something theatrical from a show that's billed in the Theatre section of the festival brochure.
In fact, this is more like a book festival event. The show is scarcely more dramatic than a reading. Chakravarthy delivers it sitting cross-legged on the floor. The seats aren't raked; we strain to see her. This isn't the atmosphere of intimate storytelling she evidently hopes to create. But then the story - a report of the events leading up to a back-street sex change operation - itself lacks charm or dynamism. It is informative, and sometimes gruelling (the eunuch's post-op wound is treated with beetles, garlic and boiling oil). But Chakravarthy lacks warmth as a performer.
She has to tell us when it's over. There then follows a question-and-answer session to pad out the final two-thirds of her allotted hour. The event is full of insights into the plight of India's transgender community, and I learned even more about Chakravarthy's artistic processes. But as theatre, this is as lifeless as the body part her eunuch leaves behind on the surgery floor.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
