I love a good two-hander. You know, the theatrical kind. They invite the audience to be the third character, and there is the complicit understanding that real connection is the central currency between two actors. 

In this ‘play with songs’, Silo has chosen a sterling text to bring us, the audience, into the picture. Director Sophie Roberts and her team bring strong choices to bear on this play-of-the-moment to create a robust, deliberately evocative, and moving night out.

This is a platform for Dan Musgrove (as Bob) and Aidee Walker (as Helena) to flex their acting muscles. They are immensely talented and superb to watch; courageous, funny, wounded and real. It’s satisfying to see a nearly 1 hour 50 minute show carried by two skilled actors working their pants off. Both play multiple characters besides their 35-year old mainstays with such detail that it’s a joy to see them explore the physical, emotional, and vocal challenges the play presents its actors with. They are totally committed to the moment.

Musgrove gives a poetic, energized performance that will resonate with anyone who’s loved and lost. Walker is wonderfully stroppy and sad at the same time. Both appreciate the absurd and sublime elements in this tale. Fantastic.

He’s a ‘petty criminal’ with nobody to remember his birthday; she’s a lawyer from a large family. Both want something more. As the parking ticket machine tells them, “Change is possible.” Yet we are also told, “Love will break your heart.” Both slogans resonate beautifully throughout the piece. 

Musical author Gordon McIntyre says the play is “about falling in love over a weekend in Edinburgh.” Through its very Scots locality, Midsummer is an ode to broken hearts everywhere throwing caution to the wind and finding the courage to connect in a moment, to take a risk, to change. It’s Edinburgh’s version of the Dublin-based film Once, except here, the songs actually have less prominence than in the narrative than in Glen Hansard’s journey of lyrical, emotional wounds.

Two guitars and a harmonica are used to beautiful effect, but I find myself wanting more variation from the musical tone of the songs. At times the short songs add perfect poignancy to the tone of the performance; at other moments, I want more substance from them, especially the lyrics. A small gripe.

Here, the story is narrated mostly in third person (“Helena walks over to Bob…”) which works wonderfully as a bridge to the poetry in the piece. The detailed, sometimes overly descriptive writing reveals both characters’ neuroses and desires. This is writer David Greig’s real skill: a simple situation – boy meets girl, and lives are changed over a wild weekend – brought potently to life by this detailed, poetic exposition. The Scots accents energetically masticate words like fleshy things that really matter. The play has a Shakespearean feel to it, exacerbated by Rachael Walker’s three-sided thrust stage.  

Midsummer has overt references to A Midsummer Night’s Dream; in Shakespeare’s play Helena and Demetrius get lost in a spellbound haze over one night through Puck’s intervention, and eventually find each other again. In Greig’s version, the two young lovers find each other but are challenged by the self-imposed drugs of choice du jour in order to escape. Alcohol, drugs, all-nighters… it’s nothing new but the play puts a contemporary twist on the age-old problems of change: Where am I going? What do I want? Harking back to the Oracle at Delphi’s maxim to ‘Know Thyself’, the play puts questions of identity under the microscope. It really is connected to something much bigger in the human condition.  

Vocal work, rhythm, and humour work well. The play is funny because it’s messy and real. I could see potential for working even more with the audience – to hold props, take photos, etc. Perhaps that’s another play but the concept is ripe for that dimension to be exploited.

Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise) would love this. I do, too, as much for the performances as the superb writing. Musgrove and Walker are totally match-fit. Go and see this truly, madly, summerly show. Ya will nae regret it.

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