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- guardian.co.uk, Thursday August 10 2000 00.00 BST
Two women meet at a wake. Ellen, a widow racked by grief, sits sobbing, rocking back and forth. Chloe, the mortician's daughter, shouldn't be there, but can't resist the food or the chance to meet boys. What unfolds in this 25-minute play is blisteringly funny, a surreal and yet deeply true encounter in which the most unlikely friendship is made.
David Widdicombe's writing manages that rare trick of being observational on the bizarre aspects of life and death without dissolving into a forced zany-fest (see most of the rest of the comic-dramatic writing on the fringe).
So, the way Ellen's husband has died - you'll have to find out for yourself - is tragic, desperately and absurdly comic, and yet neatly underplayed. The one-liners, such as they are, are similarly understated. Chloe's short for Chloroform, she says, all absent-minded lost soul munching on a radish.
The play's success owes a lot also to the quality of the performances by Nicola Harrison and Susan Bovell. They manage to handle convincingly some tough terrain (wild grief, oddball persona, mad anger, ultra-short play) and some surreal lines that in the wrong hands could be thrown away as just another run-of-the-mill bit of kookiness.
• Till August 28. Box office: 0131-226 6522.
