TWO WOMEN AND A CHAIR ***

C CENTRAL (Venue 54)

"THE lady is cool and remote and a total bitch; the servant is calculating, cold and a total weasel. All in all it has the makings of a great lesbian love story."

This, declared by Kat (played by Kat Brown), is the tongue-in-cheek synopsis of a play for which she and another aspiring actress, Helen (played by Helen Macfarlane), have arrived to audition for. Only - there’s nobody else there. No director, nothing, nada. So they wait, and wait, and wait a little more. To pass the time, they talk. Unfortunately, though, they don’t have much in common: Kat is a tough-talking power-bitch while Helen is a droopy, drippy daddies-girl. They are bound to hate one another, and they do.

Michael Olsen’s play is cleverly plotted: two women are stuck in a room together, the tension gradually mounting as they wait to audition for a play about two women stuck in a room together slowly going mad. Brown is particularly convincing in her role while Macfarlane perhaps has the misfortune of playing the less charismatic character of the two.

Plays about auditions make for entertaining Fringe viewing, and there is the uncomfortable feeling that there maybe a hundred Kats and Helens freely roaming the streets of Edinburgh right at this very moment.

Zoë Green, The Scotsman