David's Balls

David's Balls
C central, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: Grove Goddess Productions

Dave Clements.

In this rather rambling but brilliantly acted one-woman show, we eavesdrop on a conversation heard from the perspective of four characters.

The setting, a theatre company party. Our host, Angela - she wants to be as 'attractive in death as in life', and to this end indulges in laser peels, lifts and industrial silicone, to reverse the ravages of time on her sagging breasts and forehead. Martha is a 75-year-old dyke, three weeks into chemotherapy but nonetheless, 'quite chipper'.

Martha feels like a 17 year old cheerleader in her 'medicated malaise'. In fact, if life really felt like this - with death imminent, and drugged up to the eyeballs - she might stick around for a while longer. People think she talks too much about the cancer (she hasn't moved her bowels in 10 days, she confides). Martha thinks people have their quota for doom and gloom but after all, 'we're all dying'.

When it's you, it always comes in slow motion, she says. But tragedy is being alone. She fears this could happen when to her astonishment she learns that David, the local stud, is dead. Apparently he was watching the television when his testicles exploded. This is actually a story made up by David's wife to try and dissuade her stalker at the party. (Don't ask!) By the time Martha hears about it, the rumour has spread that it is infectious and thus implicates the fates of all the guests, save Martha.

Angela seems to be the archetypal ageing actress denying the inevitable, trying to prolong her looks if only to get the parts. Martha, on the other hand, talks matter-of-factly about her approaching death. She says at one point that people are obsessed with joy, but unable to deal with death, depression or sorrow. This may seem an obvious point. But going by some of the shows featured on this site, it couldn't be further from the truth. We're all too keen to indulge in a bit of misery.

1 August to 24 August.