REVIEWS

EMBARQUEZ-LES

Theatre Workshop (venue 20), 34 Hamilton Place (0131-226 5425), 12.45pm; to 2 Sept

With the charm and poignancy of Julietta Mazina's performance in La Strada multiplied by five, this delightful female clown show redeems the genre from the slapstick vacuity of pratfalls and cheap circus trickery. Their faces like white cartoon doodles and all sporting crazy pigtail antennae, the troupe take us through an average day of boarding-school life, brilliantly capturing that wide-eyed, incredulous horror that accompanies seminal events in a young girl's life: falling in love; falling out with friends; worrying about the future of the planet. They all conspire to make childhood misfortune seem gloriously appealing and very, very enjoyable.