Theatre review: David Leddy's 'White Tea'

Published on Monday 10 August 2009 19:13

DAVID LEDDY'S 'WHITE TEA' ASSEMBLY @ GEORGE STREET (VENUE 3)

There's a meeting of cultures with a much lighter touch in David Leddy's 'White Tea', playing at the Assembly Rooms; but there's still a dark backbeat of 20th-century history, and of disillusion with old-style liberalism, in this beautifully-presented micro-show by one of Scotland's leading site-specific theatre-makers about a hard-bitten western woman academic of 40 or so who is called back to Japan to witness the death of her adoptive mother, a Hiroshima survivor who became a globally famous peace campaigner, if a dangerously distant parent.

Judged by the high standards of recent works by Leddy, this story has a slightly predictable arc, as Naomi is guided back to the deathbed by her mother's lovely nurse Tomoko, and – in a nod to one of the big preoccupations of this year's Fringe – learns how to deal with death and mourning the Japanese way.

But if the script is slightly underpowered, White Tea is presented with tremendous theatrical flair, in a tiny rustling tea-house of a room where the audience must wear white rice-paper robes and drink tea; but where the walls flicker with screens reflecting all the jagged urban vibrancy of modern Japanese video culture – lurid, playful, and with an insistent edge of violence – that no calming sip of tea can ever quite extinguish.

White Tea until 31 August, tomorrow 2pm & 5pm.