It would be easy to spend a week just watching comedy at the Edinburgh festival but it is important to select a balance of shows before your funny muscles explode. Trying to find a good new play is a mine-field, there are obviously gems to be uncovered but there is also a lot of boring crap.
In the last few years Belt Up Theatre have acquired a growing reputation for interesting theatre and this year have three productions running. Children's books appear to be their theme, with their other shows revolving around the works of Frances Hodgson Burnett and Lewis Carroll while "The Boy James" concentrates on James Barrie.
We are ushered into a large Victorian style living room and meet our narrator. The unnamed boy introduces us to a forgotten world of forgotten childrens games where I prove I am the worst person to be selected to be the murderer in the game of wink/murderer.
He is then joined by a young (unnamed) girl (making impressively dramatic entrances and exits) who tries to make him rebel, throw away childish things and head towards adulthood.
This is a play about growing up. We see the older James Barrie and we know he retained his childhood innocence, especially in his writing. This is a well-acted play with a beautifully designed set and ultimately extremely disturbing. There is one particularly upsetting scene (the audience are very close to the performers) which makes its (unsubtle) point in an unnecessarily graphic scene. If the director and writer wanted to unsettle the audience it worked but ultimately left a nasty taste in the mouth, surely not what James Barrie would have wanted.
Interesting but horrific.
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