Jake Mace
The city feels like it’s about to crack open – bursting at the seams. I’m sure many of us have had similar feelings traversing the wynds and closes of Edinburgh’s Old Town during August. For Jess and Iona, it’s their last night in the city together, on the last night of the Fringe, and Jess is desperate to get the whole thing right, even if that means rewinding and rehashing the pivotal moments that would come to define their relationship. Róisín Sheridan-Bryson’s restless, relatable and vastly entertaining theatrical debut is a love letter to a city, a festival, and to the relationships that fell in between the cracks of lost time.
Meeting at a bus stop, it feels like something has always been drawing Jess (Catriona Faint) and Iona (Leyla Aycan) together. Or maybe it’s just how small, yet vastly packed, this city seems sometimes. As the two frolic through the streets of the city, picking up flyers, barging their way into shows of all stripes just to fill time together, it becomes clear that for Jess, this has to be the perfect night. As we lose all chronology and the fourth wall shatters, this highly inventive play unpacks regret, yearning, intimacy and above all, how important it is to spend time together when you can.
Our leading duo fizz and burst across the stage in a palpable manner. We become absolutely wrapped up in their relationship, every tentative embrace and unspoken word swept up in the whiplash-inducing breakneck pace that Jess and Iona’s storytelling takes us on. Their narrative switches between third and first person to intriguing effect – while it does neatly frame the piece as a retrospective it at times was a little jarring, though it’s not long before the duo ground us with fantastically timed humour and electric chemistry.
Faint’s Jess is a militantly brassy character determined to live life to its’ hedonistic unrelenting maximum, and she charts a well-worn journey across the streets of the city that seems to know her all too well. With cartoonish glee matched with moments of raw introspection, it’s a triumphant performance. Aycan’s Iona wanders alongside her with wide-eyed joy and a tad more poise, but is dragged into indulgence at many turns to show her laid-back aura gives way to a three-dimensional character.
The piece is centred around a large piece of set that originally finds itself used as bus stop, but is soon transformed into Fringe Box Office, nightclub, and everything in between as we twist and turn around the cobbled streets, in and out of venues, back-and-forth across timelines and possibilities. The central set piece is utilised well and dynamically, and there’s a continuing sense of play that runs through the veins of this story – it’s hard not to succumb to the absolute fanciful joy of the antics as Jess and Iona get into fights with bouncers and drunk patrons, speed date with Fringe-goers, and explore what feels inevitable between them.
Queer representation in this piece is nuanced, and done with a light touch that doesn’t demand the audience to see our characters as anything but themselves. That is something powerfully and richly achieved.
That narrative looseness is not always to the show’s advantage however, and there are moments where we do feel like we’re hashing out the same tension repeatedly. While a unique and thoroughly well-explored device, the plot occasionally falls into a bit of a rut. A tender, bittersweet ending alleviates thoroughly though, and the quips, jibes and banter between these two sinking into affection and sentimentality is a joy to watch unfold.
Boisterous yet tender, intense yet bittersweet – this is a story built on contradictions that explores the messiness of intimacy against the backdrop of a love letter to a city, a festival – a place, and a time.
Recommended Drink: Jess has already taken the fancy tinny – so you’re left with the plain one.
You can catch Lost Girls / At Bus Stops until August 24th at The Box at Assembly George Square from 14:20 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Image Credit: Tommy Ga Ken Wan
Lamesha Ruddock
Jasmine Silk
