Bones - Thursday 18th August

At the Edinburgh festival you can easily forget there is a world outside of the Scottish capital. As we are all aware England in July was not a green and pleasant land, although this event has mainly been ignored by the comedians here.

The fires may be out, order has been re-established with the malcontents behind bars or back in their lives. But we are now in the period of recrimination and trying to understand what went wrong and how to avoid such scenes do not recur in this generation.

A lot of people who come up here want to forget what happened but for those who don't want to avoid difficult subjects " Bones" is a must. Based in Nottingham in 1998, Jane Upton's play revolves around Mark a 19 year old lost soul living in some god-forsaken flat with his mother. No money, no job, no future.

Just in case you didn't know what kind of play you are about to witness the opening line " I never knew how hard it was to kill a baby" sets the scene and certainly kept the audience on their toes.

This forty-five minute monologue isn't an easy watch. It is a fairly relentless state of the nation piece about how life and the system can trap an ordinary nice lad. Impressively the play doesn't moralise, preach, take sides or attempt to offer a solution. But it does attempt to un-demonise the so-called under-class and try to show readers of right-wing newspapers that not all young people are born purely to loot, rape, procreate and kill.

The play, however, only comes alive through the stunning performance of Joe Doherty. He is totally natural and believable and avoids the trap of stereo-typing Mark, allowing you to fully engage with the piece and the playwright. It was also endearing that after another rapturous response from the audience he looked sheepish and embarrassed about the deserved reaction.

Harrowing but recommended.