Every year at least one play pops up at the fringe about a serial murderer. Every year there is a furore, and every year the play turns out to be a piece of tawdry opportunism with an eye to some quick publicity. The Child-Killer got its column inches when its original venue gave it the push. It is worth seeing, although uncomfortable viewing. What makes it different? For a start, this is not a case of a writer trying to get inside the mind of a killer, turning the unimaginable into art. Every word in this production was written by the killer himself, a German called Jürgen Bartsch who, in the early 1960s when he was 15, killed an eight-year-old boy, and over the next four years went on to torture and murder three more children. Edited from over 250 letters, it provides a detailed portrait of a repressed and loveless Catholic upbringing in postwar Germany.
This grave, stark production, in which two actors play Bartsch, is sensitively handled. By the end you don't understand Bartsch anymore than he understands himself. But you do understand the urgent need to do so.
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
