(I Am) Nobody's Lunch, Assembly Rooms <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->
(I am) Nobody's Lunch is a plotless cabaret cum docu-drama, a jumble of investigative journalism with songs, put together by the director Steven Cosson.
It's based on vox-pop interviews conducted by the young New York-based company The Civilians, and, judging by the eccentric characters they enact and the bizarre answers elicited, they seem to have found some pretty weird interviewees - including an extraterrestrial, who explains that his race is farming humanity to feed on its fear.
The material is spun together into a sometimes funny, more often baffling show about information culture. It would take more than an hour to untangle the web of obfuscation spun by almost every opinion-forming group in America, it seems. But with references to curbs on civil liberties in our post-September 11 world and the hearsay that forms public and political opinion, these breezy singer-actors keep it topical.
Original musical numbers, including a Weill-esque "Song of Progressive Disenchantment", punctuate the cross-talk, which ranges over torture, the possibility that the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch was staged, and the suggestion that George Bush is actually a slimy lizard. This surreal show starts encouragingly but never adds up to breakfast, far less lunch.
To 28 August, except 14 (0131-226 2428)
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