Uber Hate Gang

Andrew Carrion is a revolutionary. He just hasn't quite worked out what he's rebelling against yet.

Regardless, his plucky band of followers—the Uber Hate Gang—follow him unquestioningly; they believe in his nihilistic vision and they are willing to sacrifice their lives for his mission. Carrion is a hero, a martyr, a saint. "We are the Uber Hate Gang," he says. "Our mission is to create an event so spectacular it will capture the imagination of the masses. You cannot keep us down any longer!"

Only Carrion isn't a hero. He's a monster, and the destruction he wreaks upon his merry band of followers is one of the most harrowing things you're likely to see in Edinburgh this year.

Uber Hate Gang is an extraordinary piece of theatre. The latest offering from the consistently brilliant Horizon Arts company, this is a brutal, powerful and profoundly affecting production. Ostensibly a story about youthful frustration finding its expression in radical politics, this is a heartbreaking study of the evils that men do to women, particularly those in their trust. This was a motif visible in Horizon's last outing, the award-winning Heroin(e) for Breakfast, but it has been refined and expanded by playwright Philip Stokes to truly devastating effect.

Strangely, Uber Hate Gang takes quite a while to get going. Indeed, the early sequences feel a little weak, with much of the dialogue seeming under-developed and over-written, the delivery too shouty and lacking any real subtlety. But all of a sudden, Stokes' various narrative strands, which are often merely hinted at early-on, start coming together. Revelations about the gang's individual pasts come to the surface and, as things unravel, one is left utterly unsure as to whether anyone is really what they appear to be.

This is particularly true of Stokes' most interesting character, the misfit children's entertainer Uncle Ted, who bumblingly stumbles across the Uber Hate Gang's path. This is a man introduced as a laughable, risible, ridiculous figure but one whose futile heroism becomes a thing of tragic beauty by the play's close. 

Uber Hate Gang is a show looking to provoke a reaction. And boy does it succeed.