It’s hard to feel invited to this piece, despite the premise that we are guests at Viscountess Kasmira Auchinleck’s dinner party.

First there is no mention of Instructions to a Double amid the Mighty Mighty signage on Cuba Mall (someone may have stolen the poster). Nothing up the stairs either, nor any indication of a show in the offing once in the bar itself. The end usually used for shows (e.g. Six O’Clock Swill) looks unpromising. It turns out the opposite end, with a black curtained-off section, is the venue although there is no sign, poster, label, etc to say so. No programmes either. People do gather – and just before it we go in I retrieve a Fringe judge from the other end, waiting patiently at a table … Talk about a poor show.

Anyway, we troop in to arrange ourselves around an oval table at the behest of the white Restoration-wigged Viscountess (Erin Hutching) who speaks with an imperious European accent (high German or Dutch?) and informs us this is her 100th birthday and ve are very velcome … We are supposed to be in a grand mansion despite the stacked ABC beer crates that adorn the wall most of us look at. Neither the crates nor the constant loud hum of bar noise through the curtain are referred to so I assume we are supposed to pretend they’re not there.  

A servant called Lucius lurks under the table (publicity suggests this is either Julia Campbell or Jenine Kerr, the other one being the director, I suppose) and variously distracts individuals by fiddling with their shoe laces, gazing up between their knees, etc. Is this the "intimate sensory experience" their promotion promises? I think not.

The Viscountess has a ‘keeping up appearances’ manner, pretending all is fine when clearly it is not. Her meandering and repetitive talk – delivered in an unmodulated and stressed-sounding tone – about her twin sister, whom she blames for the death of their mother in childbirth, is interspersed with silent gazing into her hand-mirror. She also apologises for forgetting us.

The bloody raw head of a butchered animal sits on a platter and is referred to as the "special meal" we are to be served but mostly she is in front of it and we don’t get a good look at it.

An overhead projector gives us table-settings and multiple black-gloved hands set and reset the utensils, sometimes logically, sometimes not. Film of modern young sisters playing is randomly projected onto the table cloth but upside down for the majority of the audience so it is almost unintelligible, and its timing seems unrelated to the live action.

The projected girls play with a rabbit, later a raw skinned rabbit is projected in triplicate on the table. A kitch-jewellery ‘K’ necklace features in projected image and in the live action. But what it all adds up to is a mystery to me.

The "double" of the title presumably relates to the twin sister and the "instructions" are to "Lucius" but there is no ‘aha’ moment that makes us get a double life or double cross is being enacted. Nor does the ending, involving a meat cleaver, clarify anything. Maybe ‘double Dutch’ is the key.

All I can say is Instructions to a Double totally fails to invite or engage its audience at any level. The supreme confidence of their publicity material is matched only by their incompetence.

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