Feral

To build a society and break it in under an hour – that’s the arresting concept underlying this multimedia mix of miniature model work, puppetry and live sound effects. Tortoise in a Nutshell’s fourth Fringe outing sees them play god with a craft knife and a video camera.

It’s like going behind the scenes of an animated short, as three puppeteers rapidly install pre-formed houses, shops, people and a pier in Summerhall’s aptly named Demonstration Room. A scale-distorting, live-filmed tour of this tiny town is projected onto a screen above.

There’s lovely symmetry between the show’s microcosm of small-town life and the nature of its construction: in both, all the pieces matter. The devastating effect on the local economy of an arcade introduced halfway through is reflected in torn up sketches and dismantled walls.

But with miniaturisation comes problems; however interesting in its own right, the show’s sheer technical intricacy limits its storytelling. The town’s descent into chaos and rioting is accompanied by some neat effects but the simplistic big-business parable never grips.

While the noise of cars and seagulls animate the backdrop, the tiny puppets are just too rudimentary to be engaging – but it’s strangely moving when a puppeteer picks up one of the figures to gently brush off shards of glass.

Ultimately, this piece suffers from over-ambitiousness. However much the camera zooms in, the town always feels distant. But as a practical metaphor for our relationship with the world, it’s refreshingly imaginative and thought-provoking.