It’s usually a bad sign when you come out of a play praising the set design. So, before I get to just how opaque and testing this adult fairytale from the Scottish company Grid Iron is, let me first mention just how great it looks. And feels. And smells. Oh, and sounds, too.
The show is a labour of love for its director, Finn den Hertog, who has gone to great lengths to ensure that his adaptation of Shane Jones’s novel is something special. His designer, Karen Tennant, has come up trumps. The audience sits on two sides of a wintry forest grotto, with wood chippings on the floor, clusters of silver balloons on the ceilings, trees on the wall, a basket of apples on the floor, a smell of wood smoke and honey in the air.
A musician, Michael John McCarthy, stands at one end, playing guitar, or supplying glitchy soundscapes. Now and then the cast play, too: the parents in this story of a missing girl play violin (Keith Macpherson as the dad, Thaddeus) or ukulele (Melody Grove as Selah). They sing sad songs by Tom Waits, or Low, or the Handsome Family.
Yet, while fairytales can — must — be dark, unnerving, unpredictable, this one is just mystifying. This wintry town wages war on the month of February, which has been lasting for hundreds of days and, apparently, stealing young lives. It’s an intriguing premise but one that needs much more exploration and, frankly, explanation. As we get to meet a pair of Pussy Riot-style revolutionaries, a rebellious wolf is characterised by a plastic mask — it’s hard to work out what the rules are here.
Something has got lost in the journey from page to stage. What should be unsettling is just po-faced, despite the best efforts of Macpherson, Grove and Vicki Manderson as their daughter, Bianca. A woman in my row fell asleep for the second half of the show and I couldn’t help but envy her.
Box office: 0131 560 1581, to Aug 30
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