Belt Up's Atrium

“Come in, come in. Make yourselves at home…”

Set in the living room of the charming and eccentric rogue Malcolm Kinnear, Belt Up’s Atrium is not so much a fourth-wall bursting production as one that never bothered erecting it in the first place. The audience is both figuratively and literally invited into Kinnear’s surreal world; we watch from his sofa as he reluctantly dictates his increasingly absurd memoirs to a diarist hired by his wife. The audience are called upon as participants throughout, whether it be dancing at the Kinnears' New Year's party or playing tricks on the long-suffering writer, Simon.

Certainly this production is fabulously enjoyable, and the lead performance is an exemplary display of comic timing and easy charm. But as a piece of writing, Atrium feels a little under-developed. As the first original play by the young James Wilkes, Atrium is a very compelling and engrossing but ultimately shallow production. It lacks any significant depth of emotion, which—given the surrealist and absurdist context of the play—would have granted it a much more affecting presence. As it stands, Atrium feels a bit too disposable; it’s good while it lasts but is ultimately quite forgettable.

After the great success of Belt Up Theatre’s 2009 Fringe run—when the young company won great critical acclaim for their productions of The Trial and Tartuffe—the group appears to have bitten off more than it can chew by choosing to return to Edinburgh with nine productions. Maybe putting on fewer plays with a greater depth of focus would have made their Fringe a more consistently successful one.