Theatre reviews: Rainbow, Zoo Southside (Venue 82), Edinburgh

THREE actors unfold interlocking stories in this darkly beautiful play written and directed by Emily Jenkins, a recent participant on the Royal Court Young Writer’s programme.

Rainbow

Zoo Southside (Venue 82)

Star rating: * * * *

Russ (Oliver Ashworth) is a small-time thug, the hired muscle for a debt collector, who is careful not to let on he likes listening to Just A Minute on Radio 4. Tom (Kyle Treslove) gets into trouble at school for daydreaming, though he’s probably just trying to keep his mind off the fact his father is a violent drunk and he has to steal food from Tesco to survive. Martin (James Hender) is one of Tom’s teachers, self-absorbed and depressive, who confiscates a DVD case full of marijuana in class and has an epiphany watching The Matrix.

Each of them faces choices: Martin slips into an affair with a student, but will it jolt him out of apathy and self-centredness? Russ goes on a pick-up but the consequences are more than he bargained for, especially when you add in a tube of superglue. Tom is the most trapped by his circumstances. Will his “special place” give him respite from the school bully, and from his own racing thoughts?

Jenkins writes three distinctive voices, three characters with rich inner lives; three flawed, damaged human beings who are not best equipped to choose well. As the separate strands of the plot converge, we begin to see just how deep the implications of their actions are for the others.

This is a fairly static production, with each actor on their own raised platform, passing the story between them like a relay. Some sections feel a little overwritten, but Jenkins’s lively writing manages to convey both light and dark: in this rather bleak world, there are moments of beauty and unexpected tenderness.

• Until 27 August. Today 4:45pm.