Theatre review: In It's Not Real, Love/Is That Baby What

Published on Tuesday 17 November 2009 18:00

IT'S NOT REAL, LOVE/IS THAT BABY WHAT *** KITSCH COFFEE BAR, LEITH

THE Edinburgh cultural underground always struggles to find space in a prosperous city centre. But, at the moment, it's putting up a fine struggle for life, not least in its latest emerging venue, the tiny but loveable Kitsch Coffee Bar in Leith. It's Not Real, Love and Is That Baby What are new half-hour plays, presented by the ultra-young Edinburgh company Ineffect, and both offer a disturbing insight into the world of love and sex as seen by a generation barely into their twenties.

In It's Not Real, Love, by Steven McMahon and Paul Wright, four young men try to win the love of a confused but feisty young woman with a guitar and a gorgeous song, superbly played by Hannah Scott.

The writing veers wildly between undergraduate silliness and fierce poetic energy, but McMahon as a swot in a blazer, and Duncan Kidd as "the one", acquit themselves pretty well.

Is That Baby What, by Natalie McKinnon, is a more challenging piece of work, blazing with promise. It tells the story of Briony, who has become pregnant in her early teens with tragic consequences; not all teenage mums, we are reminded, automatically have babies bouncing with health.

The writing is tough, complex, sometimes surreal and the play makes space for Scott to give another outstanding performance as Briony, with Geoffrey Saunders in fine form as an old acquaintance she meets in a coffee bar, and finally shocks into silence.