Theatre review: Beadledom: Alpha

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: These twin shows from Familia de la Noche bring us to Beadledom, a sort of cosmic bureaucratic HQ where, against a backdrop of wall-mounted computer arrays, messy desks and insistent fax machines, life and death themselves are dealt with in triplicate. The staff are clowns, literally; white-faced, red-nosed, non-speaking.

Beadledom: Alpha

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61)

Beadledom: Omega

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61)

In Beadledom: Alpha, we meet Max (Edward Cartwright), the fastidious administrator of births forced to deal with a major system failure. Beadledom: Omega, meanwhile, centres on Deborah (Dott Cotton), a sort of dressed-down, daydreaming grim reaper curious about creating rather than ending life.

Both performers are engaging and sympathetic: Cartwright blends stiff hypervigilance with unexpected wonder while Cotton shows lackadaisical languor, excitement and poignancy. There’s plenty of heartfelt imagination in the shows’ visual design, in which off-kilter office decor meets childlike drawing, augmented by clever use of moving image. The recorded score of skiffle percussion and sinewy strings is good too.

But the storytelling in both shows is slow and less than clear – it’s often hard to discern quite what’s going on or what’s at stake, practically or emotionally, for the protagonists – and the low-key humour provokes gentle smiles rather than belly laughs.

Beadledom: Alpha until 26 August; today 2:50pm. Beadledom: Omega until 27 August; tomorrow, 2:50pm.

Theatre review: Beadledom: Alpha | Beadledom