Theatre review: Future Tales (Sierakowski), Summerhall (Venue 26), Edinburgh

IF YOU have been wandering the Fringe looking for the perfect companion piece to Ian Pattison’s hugely entertaining Tommy Sheridan play at the Gilded Balloon, then you may just find it – strangely, unexpectedly, disturbingly – in this bizarre but hugely purposeful 55-minute show from komuna//warszawa, one of the young Polish groups supported on the Fringe by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

Future Tales (Sierakowski)

Summerhall (Venue 26)

Star rating: * * * *

Like Tommy Sheridan, Slawomir Sierakowski – the subject of their show – is a real person, born in 1979, a leader of left-wing opinion in contemporary Warsaw. Unlike Tommy, though, he is a writer, academic, and expert in neo-Marxist theory, who refuses to involve himself in conventional electoral politics.

So komuna//warszawa – in the shape of three singer-performers, and two musicians sitting at keyboards, while also playing guitar and violin – spend a noisy, thoughtful, visionary hour imagining possible futures for Sierakowski, into the middle of our 21st century and beyond. In one version of the future, he becomes a Buddhist, gives up public life, and lives to a ripe old age. In another, he is elected President of the Republic; in a third, he is killed by aliens in a strange invasion of the planet.

There are four songs, mostly loud and quite angry; there is powerful use of film and graphics; and there is a constant, satirical sense that the kind of socialism advocated by Sierakowski is at best insincere and self-indulgent, and at worst a fast track back to some form of totalitarianism.

Yet as in I, Tommy, there is also a yearning for the kind of alternative that Sierakowski might provide; in a world where politics is less absurd, less ego-driven and more truly capable of representing the people.

• Until 26 August. Today 8:45pm.