The List[author-post-rating] (4/5 stars)

An insidious dread grips the audience with ink stained hands, as we uncover the uncomfortably familiar items on Stellar Quines’s List. In this one woman show, actress Maureen Beattie performs the story of an isolated women’s fraught adjustment to rural life. Within one of Summerhall’s wooden seated lecture halls, the audience find themselves nailed to the boards. With a barrage of cutting and compelling honesty the lone character has us rooted in our rows. Festering truths spread across the seats like a black, corrupting fungus, burrowing their way into our minds.

Beattie effortlessly conjures a vivid rural landscape all around, her voice delicately paints the village and distant fields with a desolate and pervasive gloom. Her foreboding tone reverberates around the space, instilling the air with a piercing sense of impending calamity. This ominous smog that engulfs the stalls is enough to set your very bones a-shiver.

Jennifer Tremblay’s script and Shelley Tepperman’s translation are nothing short of superb. Language is employed with a deft precision that seems designed to act directly on the audience’s now convulsing central nervous system. The piece unfurls a delightfully twisted portrayal of motherhood, ever more troubling as the audience slowly come to reflect that it is not nearly as demented as it first appears.

The play also employs a uniquely sinister soundtrack that serves to amplify the performance threefold. It’s a tantalising accompaniment that dances creepily across our exposed nerve endings to devastating effect. A tormented tale bursting with a gloriously dark allure, guaranteed to leave you trembling.

The List is playing at Summerhall as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival until 25 August. For information and tickets, please see the Edinburgh Fringe Website.