Theatre review: Collapsible, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh

Actor Breffni Holahan performs it atop a small concrete plinth supported above the stage, only a couple of feet wide; a subtle but impressive feat in itself, in that Holahan must deliver the entire piece in more or less the same position, shifting only slightly throughout.

This physical restriction emphasises what’s essentially a straightforward monologue piece from playwright Margaret Perry, bringing a sense of precarity to the foundations upon which Essie has built her normal, satisfied, modestly ambitious life.

Her previous stability buckles; her girlfriend leaves; her job becomes unmanageable, and that goes too. Her sense of self disintegrates, and she retreats into troubled isolation. Perry’s play is a troublingly realistic study of mental health issues emerging, whose points of difference arrive both in the distinctive staging, and in the tangible moment of release through real human connection at the end.

Until 25 August

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