Theatre review: The Second Copy: 2045

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: One term is esoteric. Another is plain odd. At times, it seems The Second Copy: 2045 is an idea for a show, rather than the show itself.

Summerhall (Venue 26)

***

That idea, however, is so 
idiosyncratic and performer Youness Atbane so quietly dedicated to his project, you can never quite write it off.

The artist and choreographer projects himself into a 2045 when a documentary filmmaker, who was born only in 2013, is looking back to the Moroccan arts scene of our present day.

At some point in the future, all the artists will be wiped out, so documentary research will be the only way to reclaim a lost tradition.

All that is baldly stated – Atbane makes no attempt at dramatisation – which accounts for the partly digested texture of the piece.

Yet there is something intriguing about his attempts to see the present with the eyes of the future.

If he’s not giving an amusing potted history of contemporary Moroccan art, in which every object is a metaphor and every metaphor is co-opted by the EU, he is recreating his own choreographic pieces (he does a good hand dance on a table top) for a future retrospective. File under eccentric.

Until 27 August. Today 10:15am.