It's good to talk. It is even better to tell stories and understand the meanings embedded within the narratives of all our lives.
At least that's the message of this highly personal show that begins with two 12-year-olds in a Johannesburg classroom being asked by their teacher to tell each other a story. It finishes over 30 years later in the Assembly Rooms' Wildman Room as the same two 12-year-olds - long grown-up and now longtime lovers - tell the stories of their intertwining lives.
Murray Nossel and Paul Browde both have medical and psychology backgrounds and it shows in a piece which is as much about therapy as drama, is more storytelling than theatre and which draws with an engaging frankness on their own experiences.
The piece is apparently unscripted and so it can change very much on a daily basis, and the performance I saw was largely about the experience of being HIV positive. Or just being positive, as is the case with Browde who has lived with HIV for years.
While undeniably moving, particularly in its closing sequences, the story told seemed curiously navel-gazing and slightly narcissistic in its focus on growing up white, privileged and gay in South Africa, with barely a mention of apartheid. Perhaps I was just unlucky, but you pay your money and you take your chances.
· Until Aug 28. Box office: 0131-226 2428
