QUEBECOIS playwrights have been all the rage on Scotland's trendier stages the last couple of years. Some remarkable work has ensued, and has now inspired Edinburgh's Colour Clinic to take up the baton with Normand Chaurette's little-known work, a dense yet thrilling mystery without any real dramatic action, let alone denouement or conclusion. We are the audience at a public inquiry into an aborted geological expedition to the Mekong Delta, from where its leader failed to return.
Each of the survivors takes it in turn to read out a version of events, yet somehow the truth remains evasive and inconclusive.
As the men in turn bicker and close ranks, the play comes over like a cross between Twelve Angry Men and a televised Commons sub-committee asked to articulate the horrors of Apocalypse Now. For despite the guffaw-inducing and potentially off-putting pretentiousness of the title, this is a compelling piece of narrative requiring maximum concentration.
Morven McLean's production has the actors seated at a long table throughout, talking into microphones. Whilst visually this looks like a junior avant-gardist's Wooster Group impersonation, technically it allows for understated performances free of bluster, surely a temptation here with such lengthy speeches on offer.
That such still intensity is maintained over 90 minutes is made all the more remarkable when you consider that this was billed as a work in progress, with less than a week to rehearse.
Of course, there are bound to be weaknesses and imbalances of skills, but if it can appear this slick after a week, imagine what it could be like after a month.
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