the interviewThe cavernous venue, dark and musty with grey bricks slowly dripping with yesterday’s rain, seems to trap the audience, force-feeding the message that society has become numb to the presence of torture. Titling it The Interview draws us in to this way of thinking before it even starts, normalising the chilling violence by comparing it to a situation associated with pencil skirts and best behaviour. Through this normality we’re shown how torture starts from the top (the faceless control of the Secretary) and trickles its way down into all the nooks and crannies of American citizenship. An interview implies questions and answers, but there are no questions and there are no answers. There’s uncertainty on all sides – those in control know what they are doing and how they are inflicting it, but never why.

Initially the characters seem pretty stock and predictable: a good cop, a bad cop, two power-obsessed soldiers and an innocent prisoner. But as the plot gathers momentum the characters become more human – well, as human as it gets when you’re anonymous and completely interchangeable. Man 1 and Man 2 (the interrogators) are balding, middle-aged everymen in suits with the power to kill, while the Prisoner addresses himself as an ‘American citizen’, proving that extreme violence isn’t an individual issue but a social one. The characters lead a multi-layered production that drills in inescapable responsibility. The Prisoner (played by the playwright Michael Franco) is an in-your-face outward manifestation of the agony and torment caused by torture. His silent torment speaks volumes, whilst his hallucinogenic soliloquy is a little more indulgent. Man 1 (played brilliantly by Bruno Oliver) hauntingly questions the motives of everything he has ever believed in and worked for, as he quietly and sincerely suffers psychological turmoil. Man 2 (Loren Lazerine) has lost his identity somewhere in the vehemence and there’s no way back. Soldier 1 and Soldier 2 (Jonathan Medina and Anaya Kepper) are mechanically driven by torture and killing, but their human glint comes through in flirtatious snippets of conversation. These two performers are quiet and their characters are more disposable than the rest of the cast.

The narrative has layers of its own, flitting angrily between violence, silence, hallucination, confusion and reality. Some of the production really jarred with me, drawing my attention to them as they niggled with the narrative: props and set aren’t given as much attention as performance and sentiment. An Edinburgh Fringe guide is a lazy representation of a weapon that should have been a simply attainable phonebook, while Clip Art treble clefs make their way onto the projector screen – the only set, which is otherwise used to show real, point-proving and hard-hitting news stories.

The Interview bills itself as a dark comedy: it is definitely dark, but I didn’t find myself sniggering or laughing out loud at any point. That’s not to say I wasn’t entertained, I just wasn’t shoulder-shakingly humoured. My eyes were opened, and a point was proven and proven well by combining experimentation with good, solid talent.

The Interview plays at Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) until 24 August. For tickets and more information, visit the Edinburgh Fringe website.