@ Roundabout @ Summerhall, Edinburgh, until Sun 3 Aug 2015 @ 15:35 & 22:30
As a young couple contemplate having a baby they question whether they are doing it for the right reasons. One key argument against it, at a time of skyrocketing populations and climate change, is the negative impact it will have on the planet.
There are no divisions between the scenes per se; instead, the action from one flows into the next like a person reminiscing on the past, their memories all blurring into one conjoined block of action.
With no set or props, Abdul Salis and Sian Reese-Williams are the sole visual focus with both giving tender and affecting performances, obviously in love the pair are surrounded by a confusing swirl of uncontrollable factors. Reese-Williams’ neurotic and anxious girlfriend is particularly touching, defiantly assertive but distressingly unsupported, her lines stream out of her like a fireman’s hose spraying out the consciousness we usually repress for fear of embarrassment.
While the narrative revolves around the question of whether to make another person, the focus of the text is actually an analysis of their own lives: their individual personalities, how they gel together and how their relationship develops. The repeated phrase, ‘We’re good people?’ isn’t just that universally human trait of questioning one’s own morals and principles but infers a need for affirmation from the other. While they might behave differently, they are both working towards the same goal. This is a powerfully simple story of two people whose lives, despite their ups and downs, are intertwined; they are two halves of a single whole.