Theatre review: NOLA, Underbelly (Venue 61), Edinburgh

THERE can hardly have been a show in this year’s massive Fringe brochure that promised more than Look Left Look Right’s NOLA.

NOLA

Underbelly (Venue 61)

Star rating: * * *

Staged by a young company from East Anglia that won acclaim on last year’s Fringe, the show confronts the huge and vital subject of the giant BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago and its colossal impact on the people who live along the south-eastern coastline of the United States.

Researched and edited by the company’s artistic director Mimi Poskitt, the show compiles a great deal of factual evidence, makes extensive use of video material, and follows the stories of what could be some interesting characters, including the lawyer father of one of the workers who was killed in the initial explosion, and others struggling to maintain some kind of livelihood along the coastline, in a situation where the award of compensation seems arbitrary at best.

Despite the efforts of what should be a strong cast, NOLA never shows any real theatrical life. The narrative is weak, the character sketches never take hold, the points made are obvious. And the show ends up looking like some kind of requiem for the recent wave of verbatim theatre in Britain. The research is there and so is the subject-matter, but dramatically, NOLA is dead on its feet.

• Until 26 August. Today 3:30pm.