Deluge ***

Gabi Flares is touching in this experimental one-woman show Deluge. It boasts a myriad of ideas, and there are some lovely passages in this one, but it never quite coheres for me.

Flares is acrobatic, athletic and always compelling. She begins the play with her head poking through a ladder, a sort of Beckettian restriction. She is astonishing here; the ladder is almost an extension of her body as she begins to think about the end.

She asks the audience to say something we wish we had but never did to a lover, an old friend and so on. This is the start of the show's reflections on endings — reflections that begin with great pathos but never become specific enough to move me entirely. 

The rest of the show revolves around a woman coming to terms with the end of a relationship in which she smothered jam over her partner in an erotic game. It also deals with a woman putting down her cat, the man disappearing to Australia and her worrying he might have been eaten by a Komodo Dragon.

The stories in themselves clearly have moving material, but they appear too general here.

The metaphors exist in a sort of ether and a lack of positionality makes the statements too broad to hold meaning for me. 

This is a handsomely made show. Flares is a compelling performer. The themes of the show, endings – are universal human experiences. But perhaps a show which tells a more explicitly individual story might work better for me. Furthermore, a show which deals with concrete events rather than metaphors. Still, it has been received brilliantly elsewhere, so if any of it sounds interesting to you, do go make your own mind up.

Underbelly Cowgate, until 30^th August.