The Edinburgh Fringe wouldn't be complete without a play about Myra Hindley, but although it's hardly flawless, Henry Filloux-Bennett's effort to get inside her head is less salacious and more intelligent than most. At its heart is a question well worth asking: were anybody's interests served by keeping Hindley in prison for almost four decades?
The structure of the play allows us to see both Myra in her cell towards the end of her life - a tired grey ghost who is very far from the demonising peroxide image of the tabloid press - and as a young woman, full of life but very much in thrall to the controlling Ian Brady. "He made me feel special."
The play skips between the two imagined scenarios as well as recreating some of the court proceedings to fill in the gaps in the story. It is a slightly awkward device, and some of the best writing and acting (Gemma Goggin is very good as the older Myra) is in monologue form as Myra sits alone in her cell, well aware that in stealing those children's futures she also stole her own. "I did what I did, and I live with it," she declares in a flat monotone. "Sorry is the only word I can say, and it's never enough. I can't undo what I did."
This feels like an abbreviated version of a longer play, and although like all plays about Hindley its fascination with the perpetrator over the victims seems slightly distasteful, it is also intelligent enough to suggest that the 36 years that Hindley spent in prison had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with moral outrage and attitudes towards women who kill.
· Until August 28. Box office: 0131 556 6550
