EDINBURGH REVIEWS: THEATRE The House of Pootsie Plunket St Bride's

EDINBURGH REVIEWS: THEATRE

The House of Pootsie Plunket

St Bride's, Venue 62 (0131-346 1405), 8pm, to 28 Aug

IMAGINE ORESTES with an orange pudding-bowl haircut and an expression like a stunned Cabbage-Patch doll. Add Electra with sprightly orange plaits, music ranging from Teletubbies cuteness to distorted Chopin, and the requisite evil mother and lover. Now call Electra Pootsie Plunket, her brother Kirbus, and transplant them from ancient Greece to a frozen northern Canada. The stage is set for a tragedy with a crystalline charm that beguiles at the same time as it disorientates.

Canada's Catalyst Theatre's production stuns you with an impressive glacial set and Jonathan Christenson's imaginative use of sound. Dov Mickelson steals the show as Kirbus - epitomising the play's bizarre blend of cuteness and tragedy. Sometimes the story line is over thin, but ultimately this is a show that enchants.