Theatre review: My Dead Best Friend, Summerhall, Edinburgh

Dunedin is a city that exercises a fascination from afar for Scots.

The bottom of the South Island, the bottom of the world"

My Dead Best Friend, Summerhall (Venue 26) * * *

Founded by Scottish Presbyterians, its very name is from the Gaelic for Edinburgh, with a George Street and Princes Street and a Portobello. By repute the dourest climate of any New Zealand city; when an entrepreneur rounded up a boatload of prostitutes for the very Christian settlers, they were married within a week.

“The bottom of the South Island, the bottom of the world,” Anya Tate-Manning tells us in this sweet, sad, affectionate memoir of growing up Dunedin in the 1990s, of nights in high summer with not a lot to do, and of Alison, whose home was a haven of books, music, poetry and art.

Tate-Manning uses a blackboard and stick figures to chalk up a story of friendship and loss, of worshipping the Back Street Boys, reading Margaret Atwood and making Marxist revolution, in a city where rugby is king.

Until 25 August

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