B.O.X. is a peculiar piece from NineSidedBox, a new theatre company from Harvard University. This is their first production and shows a group still very much in development, still finding their feet, but with much potential.

Bea and Elle sit in Elle’s apartment talking nonsense, sitting down to eat noodles, and occasionally conversing with the audience. Boxes start appearing in the apartment for no apparent reason. The fourth wall is broken in and out of. Phone calls with telemarketers are played out, both real and imagined.

It makes very little sense but at times it’s oddly delightful. The two women are highly-strung, immaculate, and locked in an unwinnable war of catty exchanges wreathed in smiles. We know very little about them and we learn precious little more: at present this play feels more like a snapshot scene than a full dramatic narrative. Indeed, it’s very short even by Fringe standards – no more than 40 minutes. A convincing and satisfying drama can be compressed into even smaller time, of course – but the ending here felt so abrupt that the truncated time seemed to have sold its audience a bit short.

It seems to be aiming at a Beckett style world of chattering tedium – an insatiably talkative point of existential stasis, set here in a quaint domestic frame that is at once very recognisable and yet entirely alienating. The idea of communication and the boundaries in which our lives play out was obviously a potent one in the play’s conception: yet it doesn’t quite come to fruition. Much of the dialogue is improvised and is often amusing and delectably droll – but often too the pitter-patter of words back and forth between the two actors is not handled quite with the deftness it needs to be.

B.O.X. is an interesting piece, and worth a watch. It will be intriguing to see where NineSidedBox go next – but this is very much a starter project still, a taster, an experiment to test the waters.

*** 3/5 Stars

B.O.X. is playing at C nova until 26 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For more information and tickets, see the Edinburgh Fringe website.