20/52

REVIEWS

Traverse Theatre (venue 15), Cambridge St (0131-228 1404), times vary; to 2 Sept

Jeremy Weller's Grassmarket Project aims to celebrate lives, using real people and their stories on stage. This time it's Stephanie Lightfoot Bennett's campaign for her twin brother Leon, who died in a police cell in suspicious circumstances. The cause may be good but as theatre, it's bad. Straggly dialogue rambles on and mostly ends in shouting. Intriguing aspects of the story are raised, then abandoned.Stephanie ends the play as unenlightened in her emotional life as she is in her campaign. It's not that she can't act, and Ray Smith, playing her husband, is a talented actor, but they need better direction. The piece demands more artful shaping to make it something more than a frustrating experience.

Clare Bayley