- guardian.co.uk, Monday August 21 2000 00.00 BST
Caroline Nin
Assembly Rooms ****
Enitled Scarlet Stories, this entrancing hour with French singer Nin is a temporary passport to 30s Berlin. Backed by piano and double bass, Nin has obviously devoted her life to perfecting the Marlene Dietrich/ Marianne Faithfull/ streetwalking persona. And she gets right to the heart of the songs.
Love for Sale - accompanied by a film of late night tricks on Parisian walkways - is so romantically realistic I half expect the show to be raided by the vice squad. Nin is a classic femme fatale: she has perfected the art of erotically applying powder on stage, and during Marc Almond's The One and Only You, she slides up and down with her back against a pillar.
Behind the imagery lies warmth and mischievous humour. She jokes about her obsession with prostitutes, and dresses up as a PVC dominatrix to purr the sultry song Johnny on an understandably flushed bloke's lap. A cute touch, maybe, but this is a taste of intimacy with one of music's true dark angels.
• Till August 28. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
