Showing @ Northern Stage at King’s Hall, Edinburgh until Sat 23 Aug (not 17) @ 14:50
For a virgin visit to the Edinburgh Fringe, Geddes Loom have undertaken an ambitious project. Not only does their show blend a variety of performance mediums (using live music, poetry and storytelling) they also attempt to tie it all together under an umbrella theme. They present a number of interweaving plotlines involving different characters that all have a penchant for mathematics. There are some interesting ideas on display and some of the scenes exemplify the obvious talent within the company; the musical interludes between vignettes are some of the best parts of the show.
It’s the text that lets them down. Although the spoken word is lyrical and amusing, the scenes don’t quite gel comfortably into a show. The constant referrals back to the maths feel forced, as if they were shoehorned into the script to keep the theme alive. Moments describing how numbers are all around us are interesting but aren’t developed enough to feel like a logical inclusion. The squeezed in arithmetic also overshadows the human interest in the individual narratives making it hard to care about the character’s stories. The result is a tepid concoction of lecture and performance that would have been improved if they had gone more definitively in either direction.