Stationary Excess

If you have yet to fall in love with the spirit of the Fringe, Stationary Excess might be just the thing to melt your heart. It’s a mad, action-packed half-hour monologue featuring a young American actress on an exercise bike breathlessly summarising the plot of Superman: The Movie. What’s not to like about that?

This is a production of great energy and is, through its quirky, left-field exploration of desperate loneliness, really quite interesting. Jessica Latowicki is hugely compelling as she pedals away furiously, telling us of her love for Clark Kent and of the crazy cat lady downstairs. There’s a fascinating ambiguity about whether Latowicki’s character is a resident of Metropolis and a citizen of the DC Thomson comic universe or if she is profoundly delusional and her Superman fixation is a symptom of her isolation. Her self-destructive tendencies and brief periods of lucidity suggest it’s the latter.

Although one has to consider the fact that this performance must be physically exhausting, Stationary Excess’s brevity is a hindrance. It very much leaves you wanting more, but not in a good way. Although deliberately leaving a creative work open to interpretation is not in itself a bad thing, this is a play that asks questions which are begging to be answered. That Stationary Excess doesn’t do so is desperately unsatisfying.

Nevertheless, this is a hugely entertaining production and a brilliant way to fast-forward a slow Edinburgh morning.