When we arrive, the screen behind the performers is displaying the entry for The Ego in the online fringe programme. It has a funny circularity that chimes with the self-aware nature of the show. Looking us in the eye, Belgian actors Verona Verbakel and Anemone Valcke tell us they are committed to being truthful. It is a promise that puts us on alert: do we really believe everything they say? How much is artifice? How much constructed?
They confess to misleading us in one respect. The show is only superficially about egotism. There is a nice joke when Verbakel describes The Ego as her show, then remembers Valcke and attributes it to both of them. They flatter each other and glow with the praise. In their anecdotes from film sets and award ceremonies, they present themselves as actors who are hungry for the spotlight, insecure about rejection and in need of affirmation. Their ego drives their ambition and punishes their failures.
But is their ego really what makes them feel so vulnerable? Or could it more accurately be their need to please in a ruthlessly competitive industry? Could their frustrations stem from having to suppress their rage at a post-#MeToo culture in which anti-female bias and microaggressions persist? Should a woman expect to be a male director’s muse; should she tolerate a male actor’s onstage kisses; should she welcome a new age of equality when a gender-blind acting award goes only to men?
Like several shows at this year’s Edinburgh fringe, The Ego is not about the most obvious abuses of male power and perhaps not even about behaviour that would meet the legal threshold of discrimination. Rather, it reflects a world in which women in their early 30s (they both appeared in Sirens by Ontroerend Goed more than 10 years ago) still find themselves constrained, moulded and defined by men. Their experiences dent their ego but their ego is not to blame.
• At Zoo Playground, Edinburgh, until 24 August
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