Theatre review: Shine, Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

It’s every parent’s nightmare. One night, while Max and Kate are dozing, their eight-year-old daughter Angel wanders outside and disappears.

A visceral combination of medium and subject matter

Shine, Zoo Southside (Venue 82) * * *

Fast forward five months. Angel is still missing, and Max is falling apart. He hears her voice in the radio static, in the classroom at the school where he works. Kate is losing the man she loves and, even as a professional therapist, there is nothing she can to nothing to help.

Intense performances in movement and mime by Olivier Leclair and Tiia-Mari Makinen are paired with a binaural soundscape which the audience listens to on headphones. We hear footsteps, typewriter keys, voices with a new intensity. We hear them as if we were inside Max’s disintegrating mind.

Theatre company Hippana, appearing as part of the From Start to Finnish programme, have hit on a visceral combination of medium and subject matter and, while there are plenty of horror touches, this is always, at heart, a human drama.

Leclair and Makinen are superb physical performers whose fluent movements take us right into the heart of their desperate emotions. The rushed ending feels like a missed opportunity in an otherwise polished, considered piece of work.

Until 26 August.

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