Whisper Walk

Dutch Kills Theater specialise in making immersive experiences. Last year, they brought the absorbing and intriguing ‘Temping’ to the Fringe. This year, they’re giving us ‘Whisper Walk’. You’ll need a smartphone, an accommodating data plan, and headphones. And your legs. As ‘Whisper Walk’ is a series of ‘playlets’ served up at specific locations on a picturesque circuit that starts out from Assembly Studios in George Square.

The idea is lovely and the tech is seamless. You’ll be sent a link and a location from which you begin your perambulation in advance. You find the clearly marked starting spot, click the link. The first story comes from a lady in Edinburgh with a Fringe show bearing all her hopes and dreams, telling us what happened one day when their audience was even more meagre than usual. She chats intimately, as if she’s standing right next to you amidst the seething Fringe crowds. If the self-reverential Fringe-y-ness of this makes your heart sink, keep the faith – as subsequent stories branch out into life year-round, untethered to things theatrical. The story finishes. A playlist takes you to the next location with clear written instructions and a map. And off you go.

This reviewer has lived in Edinburgh for almost thirty years and with some shame, visited places on this walk that she has NEVER been to before. The stories lollop from lost opportunities, lost loves, unfinished stories, tangly relationships and love waiting to be found. Most are around four minutes long though the final story is a bumper seven and a half minutes. Various voice actors deliver the stories and each story is accompanied by a carefully created soundscape that complements the location. The playlists between times match the mood of the intervening stories and bring a spring to your step.

Some of these stories are laugh-out-loud funny. The Barbara Hepworth story is a chortle-worthy delight. Others are intriguing – the vet, the box, the Cowgate Kaiser sign. A couple made this reviewer cry – quite the feat when you’re on your feet in busy streets on a sunny Edinburgh Sunday. There is a lovely wistfulness in these stories – a sense of confidences being shared so you quickly forget this is a play and instead, enjoy this window into these various people’s worlds. Hard to provide a ‘crescendo’, you might think, with such a format, but ‘Whisper Walk’ delivers here too, with bells on. Be sure to pick up the phone.

The whole experience took this reviewer about an hour and a half from start to finish but she isn’t very good with street maps so you may accomplish it more speedily. For anyone with mobility issues, the route involves some steps and a fair bit of walking but you dictate the pace so don’t let this put you off. The joy of this piece is taking the time to stop, look up and marvel at the wonder of the world – and the people – around us.