Theatre review: The Expiration Date Of Jonas MÃ¼ller (Age 70)

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: I'm standing on stage in a play about a play I may well have also been standing on stage in '“ or if I wasn't, I should have been, because this must be the most self-referential piece of theatre at the Fringe.

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23)

***

I’m playing Tim Honnef, the writer, who is playing Jonas Müller, who is credited as the writer, but is actually Honnef’s alter ego and sometimes nemesis. Müller has apparently written Honnef a play – which is to be his last: a critique of Honnef’s past behaviour, which Honnef gets to read out on stage in a mind-melting battle of two opposing egos. Müller and Honnef might both have an inflated sense of their own work – although there is nothing in this piece that isn’t drenched in irony – but there’s a noir-like quality to Honnef’s dry, downbeat delivery and the melancholy of a writer who has spent too much time alone with a destructive inner voice.

A love triangle develops into a more interesting story about taking responsibility for your own work as an artist when it goes wrong, of taking a risk when it would be far easier to do something else.

While it’s disappointing that 12 coffins and an urn never turn up, I really hope this isn’t Müller and Honnef’s last play.

In talking about art, they prove it’s worth making it.

Until 27 August. Today 1:20pm.