A woman in her fifties with a streak of grey in her hair, awakes one morning to find a mysterious hole has appeared in her back garden. It’s emitting a peculiar hum. She hopes it will go away. The next day, she awakes to spy another. The next day, another. In the end, she decides she needs to take action.

As Far As We Know is a wild whirlwind of a play about a world that doesn’t make sense, written and performed by Sam Ward of experimental theatre company YESYESNONO. The show opens with Ward sitting at a desk, lit by a single lamp. He opens a cardboard folder, obligingly warns us that we might not be able to keep up, and launches into a breakneck volley of words describing the woman dashing from home into town into cars into phone boxes into banks and back again, all in a quest to discover what is causing the holes and the hum. It’s a bit like being hit round with the head with Wikipedia, but you don’t dare take your eyes off it in case you miss something.

Ward pauses for breath and we’re in a blackout. Part two of the play is delivered by captions and immersive foley. We’re no longer hearing about the woman – we are the woman – before Sam returns to his desk to deliver the resolution which offers precisely no resolution at all. This play, with its ants and equities and empty rooms and unanswered questions – is a conspiracy theorist’s dream.

This fever dream is executed with aplomb by Han Sayles on lights and Carmel Smickersgill on the brilliantly jazzy sound design. Tiny changes in lighting states highlight the bits we need to pay real attention to. Little or large changes in the soundscape keep the story bounding along. Is this a Don’t Look Up style metaphor about climate change? Or a 65 minute-long telegram that nothing in the world makes sense and everyone’s ignoring it? Or is it ‘just’ a Hunter S. Thompson-style wild ride through Ward’s weird and wonderful mind? Whatever the answers matters much less than the fun that Ward has in an impressively assured performance. Expect to come out with no answers and more questions and you’ll relish this hour and a bit of bamboozlement.

As Far As We Know is at Main Hall at Summerhall until Mon 31 Aug 2026