Crash

Crash

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

The set - wall, floor, all covered with the same curve of shiny black cladding - soon feels like a slippery slope that the Man (Jamie Michie) is never going to get off.

There he sits, alone, in his black swivel chair - and it, too, takes on different guises as his soul-searching monologue twists and turns between flashback and the present day. Could it be a psychiatrist's chair? A secret equivalent of a penitential stool? Once upon a time, it had been the Man's high-powered seat at an office screen where, as a successful stock-broker, he'd made the numbers join up into profitable deals. That was all before the crash.

Thanks to writer Andy Duffy's smoothly adroit overlapping of narrative strands, you're offered a choice of crashes to explain why our Man in the confident business suit is disintegrating. Was it the long-ago car crash that robbed him of his trader's mojo?

For sure Michie's persuasively nuanced performance convinces you that his character is haunted by that past.

He also persuades you that taking up meditation has opened up a brighter, more positive future where taking risks - not just with money, but with relationships - is what he's still good at.

It all crashes again: differently, but now Duffy shades in a creepy-scary edge and Michie instantly responds, like a sensitive litmus-paper, to the cleverly-wrought confusions that beset his character. He makes you like him, then doubt him.

Even as he ponders the truth of "everything that happens is created by you" - a phrase that lingers from his meditation sessions - we're wondering what exactly has been happening, and how responsible is he for events that veer into tragic consequences for others. This compelling tour-de-force is at Edinburgh's Traverse next week.

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