giddy romance, sweetly evoked

For reasons it would be indecorous to disclose, I've been more than usually preoccupied with sex and relationships this month. So I decided to round off my Fringe with some shows addressing these delicate issues. The first and best was Tuesdays And Sundays, a tender tale of young love won and lost, set in a remote Canadian town in 1886-87. It's written and performed by Edmonton-based Medina Hahn and Daniel Arnold, who've been touring it in Canada for more than two years.

Their easy familiarity with the material and with each other pays handsome dividends. The play is essentially a monologue for two voices and they deliver it with wonderful fluidity, their words and emotions colliding and overlapping.

First love's giddy rush is played so sweetly it brought a tear to my eye; while the restrained sadness that follows throws focus on the play's sombre message of patriarchal repression.

Director/dramaturg Wojtek Kozlinksi stages the piece with admirable economy. No unnecessary movement or gesture is indulged, yet the story is vividly re-enacted. The minimal set is hideous, but it's the only blot on a beautiful little drama.

The couple in Ride are rather less innocent. Awaking naked in his bed after a long night out, a man and woman are so booze-fuddled they don't remember meeting, never mind what may have followed. I have a horror of alcohol-associated amnesia, but writer/director Jane Bodie offers an intriguing and strangely endearing scenario. As he (former Neighbours star Todd MacDonald) and she (Fiona Macleod) spend the day trying to piece together the night before, they develop a gentle rapport and explore darker questions of memory and trust that will be familiar to many. It's a fairly slight piece, but witty, engaging and played with great charm.

More elaborate is The Split, a Californian divorce satire by Frank H Strausser. It starts well, with a mildly preposterous premise about how to divide possessions and custody, but roves off into an irrelevant subplot about Jean Harlow and winds up 20 minutes too long.

Yvonne McDevitt's well-heeled production is played with flair by a British-American cast, with good work from Scottish actress Mabel Aitken; but the performances are stylised to differing degrees, and one or two are clearly too big for a studio production. The ending is far from unpredictable; and in all, less would have been more.

Enough of love. Bring on the vitriol. It's asking for trouble, staging a show that attacks arts journalism in a city swarming with hacks. And I could take issue with Alex McSherry's black comedy The Critics for its failure to grasp what we do and how our industry works. But why bother? It's undeniable that many of us are venal sluts with alcohol problems. But this is a hopelessly misconceived, implausible and incoherent play whose flashes of good writing are swamped in unfunny sexual and lavatorial jokes. The staging is also truly awful. But you'd expect me to say all that, wouldn't you?

reviewed Tuesdays and SundaysPleasance Dome, until August 26, Fringe Brochure p155HHHH RideAssembly Rooms, until August 26, Fringe Brochure p145HHHH The SplitPleasance Dome, until August 26, Fringe Brochure p150HHH The CriticsGilded Balloon, Until August 26, Fringe Brochure p119H

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