A Dark Line Upstairs ****

The River Po stretches the width of Northern Italy, from the Alps across to the Adriatic south of Venice. The River Adige flows from the Dolomites, hitting the Adriatic a little further north. There is a flatland between the two known as Polesine, around Rovigo. In 1951, it flooded.

It had been a bone-dry summer, but in the autumn when the rains came, they did not let up. Italy was just emerging from fascism and the Second World War, with resources still thin. When the region flooded, it would become Italy’s biggest natural disaster, with dozens killed and 180,000 people left homeless.

A Dark Line Upstairs, therefore, refers to the physical remnant of that flood, still visible as a dark line in many buildings. But this is only one strand of Matilde Vigna’s production. Alongside it runs the story of an Italian woman who moves to Scotland in 2021.

She has packed her worldly possessions into cardboard boxes, having moved repeatedly and become an expert in both packing and minimalist living. For this move, she needs the “goodbye forever” suitcase, rather than the “see you later” version.

The two stories start to intertwine – those ordered to evacuate in 1951, in many instances, could not even take a ‘goodbye’ suitcase, the evacuation concentrating on saving lives rather than possessions.

Vigna is ‘rain-phobic’, leaning into generational inheritance. She wryly questions the choice to move to Edinburgh, with its notoriously unpredictable weather patterns.

Vigna is a fine and charming storyteller, with a gentle truthfulness conveyed through an inner poise. The performance perhaps had a somewhat languid opening, the pace needing a little attention, but once she hit her stride, the Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale production flowed well.

There is also a suggestion that God is present in both the big and the small: everyday micro-battles such as relationship break-ups and mortgage payments are set against the vast, increasingly urgent problem of climate change.

The wider societal message of the production is clear. As the climate crisis unfolds, devastating environmental disasters will inevitably become more frequent and severe. Yet many politicians continue to respond with expedient denial or inaction. The question that A Dark Line Upstairs leaves us with is both simple and unsettling: how many of us will eventually need that “goodbye forever” suitcase?

Zoo Playground, until 30^th August.