Review: Rapid-fire theatre offers a mixed bag of treats

AS I write, the National Theatre of Scotland's latest exercise in theatrical boundary-busting has been running for just one hour, out of 24; and already, it's clear that something is happening, although it's hard to say what.

Across Scotland and beyond, 235 groups or individuals have created five-minute shows, which are being performed and streamed live during these 24 hours, or have already been recorded for streaming online.

And as you'll see if you drop in on the NTS website, the result is such a wild profusion of different types of performance and transmission - live and recorded, intimate and stagey, wordless and wordy, outdoor and indoor, professional and not-so-professional - that it's almost impossible to compare one show with another, far less with the other 234. Add a fair number of technical problems - breaks in live streaming, or the sudden disappearance of advertised shows to be replaced by others originally scheduled elsewhere - and it's sometimes difficult to know exactly what you're watching; and though some pieces come equipped with clear information about the venue and producing group, others seem to exist in a kind of limbo, which is perhaps where they want to be.

If it's possible to make any generalisations so early in the process, it looks to me as if there are two ways of making a aesthetic success of this strange five-minute form, which - at the insistence of the NTS - must be recorded or performed in front of a live audience.

The first successful approach is to treat the show like a five-minute film, to focus on good camera work and strong individual performances, and to turn out something that looks professional on-screen; good examples so far include Perth Theatre's opening ghost monologue The Gods Are Waiting, performed with gusto by Sally Reid, and Cathkin High School's Box Of Chocolates, about a girl coming to terms with the absence of a Valentine from the boy she loves.

And the second is to eavesdrop on a genuine experiment in performance, which starts to build a new relationship between performers and audience; Platform Arts in Easterhouse has already contributed two strong shows along these lines, including one about a crowd of women at a tea party in an ordinary living-room.

Of the eight films I've seen so far, perhaps half have had some artistic quality, and half have been pretty bad, in material, or camera technique, or both. But everyone involved seems thrilled to be involved. And with that, I'm off to Adam House, the Five Minute Theatre "hub" in Edinburgh, to join the live audience. It's an unprecedented theatre event, that needs an unprecedented rolling review; so for further instalments, see later editions of today's Scotsman, and tomorrow's theatre page.