Theatre review: Yellow, ZOO Playground, Edinburgh
Yellow, ZOO Playground, Edinburgh * * *
She and Ed choose the cavernous nursery room on the top floor, with the strangest, most repulsive wallpaper you could imagine, the colour of diseased teeth. Charlotte, Grainne Dromgoole, has come here under doctor’s orders to try and cast off post-natal depression, visions of a rotting baby. Christopher Connolly plays a sinister, sapping combination of Dr Weir, and husband Ed, who sees fit to hide her books, sever her connection with the outside world, in the name of bringing enforced calm.
The cast are thrown very close to the audience in this little stage; but Dromgoole’s committed, unaffected acting and Connolly’s fine menace, together with some neat low-budget stage trickery, create a creepy, unnerving and suffocating drama. They inject a taste of horror into this modern adaptation of The Yellow Wallpaper, a classic Victorian tale. Natasha McCabe ably assists as the woman in the walls.
Until 26 August