EDDIE AND THE SLUMBER SISTERS

Seen at Corn Exchange, Haddington,

Touring until June 3

CREDITORS

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Until May 12

Reviewed by Mark Brown

Touring work and shows for children are, in our austere times, too rare within the Scottish theatre firmament. It is a real pleasure, therefore, to see a major national tour (by co-producers Catherine Wheels and the National Theatre of Scotland) of an imaginative new play for kids aged eight and upwards.

The brainchild of co-creators Gill Robertson (who directs) and Anita Vettesse (who wrote the script), Eddie And The Slumber Sisters is a delightfully original, humorous and humane piece about a little girl struggling with bereavement.

Edwina ("Eddie" to her family and friends) has been in a bad way since her beloved grandmother died. Robbed of her daily routine of cycling from school to granny's house to make chicken noodle Cup A Soup and dance to Elvis, Eddie has not been her normal self.

Upset and distracted at school, she has been getting into fights (and into trouble). More worrying still, at 2.17am every night, Eddie's sleep is taken over by terrible nightmares.

We know about the girl's sleep state with such precision thanks to the Slumber Sisters, a trio of super-heroine a capella singers who monitor children's dreams and ensure peaceful sleep.

The audience is seated around designer Karen Tennent's beautifully envisioned Slumber HQ (think a cross between a comfy home and the TARDIS). There the Sisters, Penelope (Natalie Arle-Toyne), Augusta (Colette Dalal Tchantcho) and Robin (India Shaw-Smith), seek to save Eddie (Chiara Sparkes) from her nightmares.

The ensuing drama (in which Robin makes an intrepid visit from the world of Slumber to planet Earth) is well-acted, gorgeously sung and deliciously quirky. It is also touchingly engaged with the difficult subject of bereavement in childhood.

Honest, life-affirming and peppered with moments of charmingly eccentric comedy, this is, needless to say, a dream of a show.

By very stark contrast, David Greig's adaptation of August Strindberg's classic Creditors is a work of dark psychology, and definitely not for children. First staged at the Donmar Warehouse in London a decade ago, Greig's version of the Swedish bard's poisonous love triangle is given a powerful new production by superb director-designer Stewart Laing.

Middle-aged schoolteacher Gustav (Stuart McQuarrie on chillingly cynical form) has travelled incognito to the seaside resort where his younger former wife, and novelist, Tekla (Adura Onashile) and her youthful second husband, and visual artist, Adolph (Edward Franklin) are on holiday. There, in Tekla's absence, Gustav draws the diffident and credulous Adolph into his mendacious confidence.

Overcome, both by what he takes to be Gustav's intellectual brilliance and the teacher's ideology of sexist fatalism, Adolph loses his faith, not only in his wife, but also in love itself. When Tekla returns, the artist is, on Gustav's instructions, listening in on the conversation between the novelist and her ex-husband.

The latter exchange is conducted inside the wooden chalet that dominates Laing's strikingly ultra-naturalistic set. Therein the action is filmed and projected live, in black and white, onto a screen.

The effect of this is to draw us, the audience, uncomfortably close to an intimate scene in which Adolph's devious vengeance masquerades as affection and desire. It is, as we have come to expect of Laing, a perfect matching of technical form to dramatic content.

The unflinching emotional bleakness of the piece is reflected in universally excellent performances. The narcissism and inconstancy of Onashile's Tekla reflects boldly the misogyny inherent within the play.

The disquieting, quasi-otherworldiness of the production is enhanced by the strange quartet of mechanically regimented Girl Guides, whose exploratory activities punctuate the hell being created by the adults in their midst.

For tour dates for Eddie And The Slumber Sisters, visit: catherinewheels.co.uk