Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 23 Feb

Showing a work in progress can be risky but it can also be an important part of the development process. Rather than presenting the final product, David Greig’s staging of Andrew Greig’s collection of poetry is rough, rugged and for that reason, very engaging. This is the kind of production that cements the Traverse’s position as Scotland’s new writing theatre; we see it all here: the roots, the development and the potential.

Tam Dean Burn and Lewis Howden star as Crew and Skip, shipmates embarking on a journey to the uninhabited island of Cava. The performance is full of familiarity and nostalgia and as the journey continues, it becomes a story of adventure, abandonment, discovery and curiosity. As they rightly question: why have a mini-break when you can have a micro odyssey?

With short scenes punctuated by music and song, performed by Rachel Newton, this is a funny, endearing piece of theatre that welcomes you into the stories. The collection of work is inspired by Andrew Greig’s own voyage, with his friend, up the Scapa Flow to Cava. Whether you’ve been there or not, the camaraderie reflected in the two characters is easy to relate to. Poignant monologues and lively poems are performed energetically in a dense 80 minutes. The bareness and simplicity of the set make the text the prominent feature of the production: the poetry reveling in the coarse, guttural elegance of Scots language while depicting vivid images of land, sea and people. This low-budget work in progress serves as a reminder that quite often less is more; the vulnerability of work in development is its strength and if there’s more to come, we as the audience have a lot to look forward to.

Follow Emma on Twitter @emmlhay