Theatre review: Arrivals, theSpace on the Mile, Edinburgh
Arrivals, theSpace on the Mile, Edinburgh * * *
A comedy drama set in an alarmingly empty Budapest Airport, Johnny Cameron plays Tony, who wakes up blearily with no recollection of how he got there. The only other person around is Hannah Bradley’s persistently ebullient Mel, who keeps chatting a mile a minute which is doing Tony’s hangover no favours. Bradley, making her Fringe debut, is very funny with a Tiggerish energy and an annoying habit of trying to make up a song, “We’re Stuck In Budapest Airport!”
Fans of the popular two-people-stuck-in-big-empty-sterile-spaces sub-genre may guess where this is going but Thomson is smart enough to show his hand two-thirds of the way through. The show’s success isn’t predicated on the twist, it comes from Mel helping Tony piece together how he got there and try to figure out whose suitcases are those, anyway. This is a suitably bare bones production by Edinburgh-based Twelve Twelve Theatre, but it’s effective and thoughtfully hasn’t tried to pad out its running time beyond what at 45 minutes, feels like its natural length. It’s also a more than promising debut for Bradley.
Until 24 August.