By The Newsroom

Published 9th Aug 2023, 13:46 BST

Updated 9th Aug 2023, 14:07 BST

17 Minutes ****

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 28 August

At a high school somewhere in Ohio, a 15-year-old takes out his father’s assault rifle and guns down 11 teenagers. But the focus of Scott Organ’s play, staged by theatre company Barrow Group, is not on the tragedy itself but on Sheriff’s Deputy Andy Rubens and the 17 minutes between the first shot being fired and the arrival of the SWAT team.

In those 17 minutes, 11 young people lost their lives and Rubens appeared to do nothing. In the course of the play, this apparent inactivity is called into question by a detective, by Rubens’s closest colleagues, and finally – movingly – by one of the bereaved parents. He says he followed procedure, but the unspoken question – why didn’t he run toward the shots and attempt to subdue the gunman? – hangs powerfully over his head.

The strong cast of six is led by Larry Mitchell as the stoic, stubborn Rubens, neither accepting any culpability nor giving a satisfactory explanation for his behaviour. There are also particularly strong performances from Michael Giese as the father of the killer, and Lee Brock as Mrs Bauserman, who lost her son in the shooting.

The naturalistic style of Seth Barrish’s production feels unusual for the Fringe, and Organ’s play moves at a stately pace, posing its questions in forensic detail. Edward T Morris’ slick, pared-back set functions as police station, school, pub and home.

In the face of another senseless tragedy, Rubens is an easy target for blame yet it can’t be made to stick. Having someone to blame implies a narrative of cause and effect, imposing meaning on events which are often meaningless, when the only true culprit is a broken system. Susan Mansfield

Lino ***

Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Venue 236) until 19 August

In Lino, protagonist Em (played by a magnetic Mace Cowart) enters into an experimental procedure to have their emotions removed and their memories extracted. It is a queer dystopia, a story of sexuality and gender transition. It is a bid to forget someone.

Lino is energetic, knowing, even glowing in its humour. Sequences of movement celebrate the ability of the body to transgress and transcend binary thinking, and the piece challenges stereotypes, stigmas and misunderstandings head on. Em comes up against characters who think they understand the relationship between sex and gender, or who refuse to participate in politics of identity except as sceptics.

Bailey Hacker’s direction, and an excellent use of lighting and sound, helps to establish a geography of time and place. However, the central story is superior to the dystopian frame that seeks to contain it, while the link between the two oscillates between the obvious and the oblique.

In its analysis of the lesbian experience, the language of the play can be problematic. To suggest there is one single lesbian experience risks suppressing a range and multiplicity of perspectives. But overall, Lino succeeds in sidestepping generalisation and prescription, foregrounding the personal and the possible with aplomb. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Violet and Me ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 28 August

Dorothy Lyman, star of America soap operas Another World and All My Children, explores a specific familial relationship in this autobiographical solo show. Her mother Violet, she explains, “gave a whole new meaning to tough love”: emotionally distant, even by the standards of the 1950s, and terminally angry.

For clues to this behaviour, she looks back into Violet’s life: her childhood in an orphanage; the buyer’s job in a department store which she had to give up when she married; the husband who never let her handle money again. We begin to see what made her so angry.

Lyman reflects frankly on how this impacted her own life, admitting that her decision to leave her husband and children to pursue acting – which was much criticised in the press at the time – happened, in part, because she feared she might turn into Violet.

The show is a piece of storytelling with pictures that, despite Lyman’s long and varied acting experience, is surprisingly non-theatrical. But it is also a clear-eyed exploration of how to make peace with a difficult parent even after their death, and a powerful reminder of how much has changed when it comes to women and their life choices. Susan Mansfield

Breaking Open **

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 12 August

In her music career, Oskar Saville has toured as vocalist with 10,000 Maniacs and sung the US national anthem at Madison Square Gardens – not bad for someone who didn’t speak until she was four years old. But the personal testimony she brings to the Fringe is a more domestic story about following her intuition – which manifests as voices crowding in at unlikely moments – even if it means ending her marriage. Saville has been through the mill and out the other side but she performs with such a smile in her voice it tends to make the toughest travails sound not so bad. It rather robs her script of its potential punch. Fiona Shepherd

Am I Nuts! ***

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 12 August

Stargaze Theatre company's production is a strong piece with an ensemble approach that allows everyone to shine. Centring on the relationship between young couple Smith (Diggory Gill) and Jones (Chloe Lansdowne), we see how the stress of outside pressures affect their relationship. Suffering severe nightmares, Smith's sanity is questioned and he is encouraged by Jones to seek help. The wacky and annoying therapists that Smith visits – who are played with great comedic timing by various young talented actors – arguably make him even angrier with their lack of sincerity and ability to listen. The inclusion of caricatures and parodies is a major element of the piece, all of which poke fun at society and the weird characters that exist within it.

With slick scene transitions and choreographed movement sequences, the piece crosses two time periods, going from modern day to caveman times (which has some funny repetitive sequences). Although enjoyable, just why this is done and the connection – if any – between the periods is not clearly apparent.

The thought-provoking script by Benjamin Symes is certainly quirky and at times a little mind-boggling. What it does particularly well is show how all-consuming the unstable political climate and the global climate emergency is for young people. Suzanne O'Brien

Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatre reviews: 17 Minutes | Lino | Violet and Me | Breaking Open | Am I Nuts!