Autobahn
★★★☆☆ Atmospheric
Summerhall: Fri 5 – Sat 6 Jun 2026
Review by Hugh Simpson
Autobahn by Neil LaBute, presented by Edinburgh Acting School in their downstairs studios at Summerhall, is an interesting series of playlets that never quite gets up to full speed.
This is a collection of short one-act plays, each featuring two people in the front seat of a car. LaBute originally wrote five of these vignettes, and then added two more; four of them are performed here.
Of the four, three are essentially monologues, with the second character reacting silently. In Funny, a daughter (Anna Chirumbolo), just out of rehab, explains to her mother (Gillian Scott) how she is now going to be ‘honest’. All Apologies features a bitter spouse (Rashné Limki) going through a series of increasingly angry non-apologies to their partner (Nelly Reinhold). Autobahns has Reinhold again as a wife whose disappointment at the ending of the relationship with their foster child reveals things about her husband (Paul Blanchfield).
Rashné Limki and Nelly Reinhold in All Apologies. Pic: Adam Butler.
The only piece here in which both participants speak is Merge, presented on this occasion as a rehearsed reading. A sunglasses-wearing wife (Scott) stumbles through an apology to her husband (Blanchfield), with the story becoming more extreme as it goes on.
While the plays would certainly work better in the US, with its freeways and its more car-obsessed society, the individual plays have an impact in their explorations of language, psychological control and an atomised society. The sparky, rather nasty dialogue is also highly effective.
However, there’s a definite sameness to the pieces, and you soon get attuned to the structure and start waiting for the moment (just over halfway through) when the revelation is going to come about what is really going on. There is a stop-start feeling to the whole affair, not helped by the breaks of a few minutes between the individual elements.
There is also an inherent problem with the fact that three of them only have one character speaking. In All Apologies, the car is stationary, but in the other two the silent character is driving, something which isn’t represented quite as convincingly as it might be.
careful and clever
Merge, meanwhile, unavoidably suffers from being a rehearsed reading, and the result tends to dissipate much of the energy that has been built up. Moreover, the script features a great deal of overlapping dialogue which is not reproduced here despite the performers’ best efforts.
Adam Butler’s direction is extremely careful and clever throughout, however, and the minimal staging and intimate space create genuine atmosphere.
There are some very impressive performances. Chirumbolo’s apparently bubbly daughter, Limki’s self-justifying stalker and Reinhold’s increasingly desperate wife are all well-paced and engrossing. The respective silent partners cope very well with that difficult business of reacting. However, each individual play takes time to get going and then ends every time the rhythm has been built up.
This is an inherent problem with the material and certainly not the fault of anyone involved in this production. The result, however, is that individual playlets are largely convincing and performed with promise, but the production as a whole suffers from a lack of coherence.
Running time: One hour and 25 minutes (including short breaks between the pieces)
EAS Studios@Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, EH9 1PL
Friday 5 – Saturday 6 June 2026
Daily at 7.30 pm; Matinee Sat 2.30 pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
Edinburgh Acting School website: www.edinburghactingschool.com/
Facebook: @Edinburghactingschool
Instagram: @edinburghactingschool
Linktree: @edinburghactingschool
ENDS
