When only a novice conman, Lawrence Leung held a pack of cards in his hand for three weeks, sleeping and awake. He learned how to guess the quantity in his hand by their weight alone; how to memorise where in the pack certain cards were hidden and how to produce them on demand. He thought he was acquiring the skills for dishonest practice on the streets of his native Australia. In fact, he has gone on to deploy them onstage at the Edinburgh fringe. This show is the story of his short career in confidence trickery. Or so he says.
Sucker locates itself at the informal end of the theatre scale. Leung is a gauche but infectiously enthusiastic young man. He shows us close-up card tricks, videoed and relayed on to a backcloth. And he tells us how, as a 17-year-old, he became involved with the Professor and his daughter Sarah, two travelling con artists. He explains how cheating people involves turning their dishonesty back upon themselves, and how he practised those principles on unsuspecting jewellers and businessmen. And he tells of how he and Sarah grew disillusioned with the seediness of life on the scam; of how he loved and lost his swindling collaborator.
Leung's account is full of fascinating information, and is insightful into more than just deception. Knowledge, status, money and love are not just the desires that the trickster exploits, says Leung; they are the incentives behind everything we do. His twist-in-the-tail suggestion that the whole show has been an elaborate con is just the most mischievous of the aces Leung has up his sleeve.
· Until August 26. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
