Others

Jemma McDonnell, Kylie Walsh, and Maryam Hamidi have spent the last six months engaged in correspondence with an Iranian artist, a prisoner from Yorkshire, and a rather unresponsive Heather Mills. In doing so, they wished to come to grips with the concept of the 'Other' – to understand what makes them so different from these three impossibly distant women.

They do so with dynamism, imagination and humour, intermingling verbatim letter-reading with acting out the three personas and caricaturing their own reactions. Unfortunately, the cleverly devised mini-scenes are too disparate and indistinct to really cohere into a strong message or vision of their elusive Other. As such, the play is perhaps better appreciated as a pleasant dance around the subject of difference and identity rather than an in-depth examination.

But most arresting are the remarkable parallels between the three talented actresses onstage attempting to bridge the gap to the three women they’ve never met, and the audience attempting to bridge the same gap with these performers onstage. In trying to discover their Other, they display themselves – their curiosity, their intelligence, their playfulness – to the audience. In turn, the audience has precious little choice but to attempt to discover them: to picture the three as they conceived their idea, received the often moving letters from their peculiar penpals, devised and rigorously rehearsed so they could bear themselves to Edinburgh come August. In a venue which can be called anything but intimate, they manage to create an experience which is personal and eminently worthwhile.