Play On

Aug 18 2025 | By Tom Ralphs More

★★★☆☆ Shakespearean escape

Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29): Mon 11 – Sun 24 Aug 2025
Review by Tom Ralphs

Erin Boulter’s Play On for Edinburgh-based Resilience Theatre Movement follows what is something of a theme at this year’s Fringe: estranged siblings forced back into each other’s company following the death of a parent.

Any show based around such a theme needs to have a unique selling point if it is to stand out from the crowd. In Play On the USP is the setting in a Shakespearean themed escape room, where Ash and Lea have been sent to receive their mother’s last will and testament.

Nora Went and Erin Boulter in Play On. Pic: Resilience Theatre Movement.

Of course, their mother hasn’t done this simply because of a love of games and a desire to frustrate her children’s attempts to find out what she wants to happen with her estate. As Ash notes, she has done this to force the two siblings to reconcile. Whether this will happen, or if it will just make them resent her as well as each other, is something she might not have fully considered.

The Annexe at Paradise Vault, nestling deep in the darker recesses of the city is the perfect venue for the play. The set design makes maximum use of the space to create two rooms within a small space, divided by a lit white line on the floor that is broken at times to allow the actors to make full use of the limited stage space.

disconnect

In the first room, the clues are themed around Hamlet, as Lea’s full name is Ophelia, after the character in the play. Similarly, in the second room, the clues take their lead from Twelfth Night, just as Ash, full name Sebastian, takes their name from the character in that play.

Erin Boulter’s script is not afraid of making use of silence and pauses, rather than relying on words and gestures alone, to create the sense of disconnect between the siblings, and Shamama Fatima brings this out in her direction.

Erin Boulter in Play On. Pic: Resilience Theatre Movement.

The production choices made by Fatima and stage manager Mary Jane McNally extend to the choice of outfits with Ash dressed in dark red in contrast to the traditional funeral black worn by Lea. From the outset, this provides an immediate effective contrast between the two.

It is clear that the production is very much a team effort where everyone, including technician P Jacobs and music director Alli von Hirschberg has confidence in and commitment to Erin Boulter’s script.

As well as writing the script, Boulter plays Ash, opposite Nora Went as Lea. As Ash, Boulter conveys the greater distance from their mother and the mixed emotions of envy of living in the shadow of their elder sibling alongside betrayal at Lea’s original departure.

vehicle

As the adopted protégé of her mother, Went captures the essence of someone trying to live up to expectations they may have preferred not to have had placed upon them, while also showing how the call of home and her mother was something she found impossible to ever fully escape from.

The escape room device however is largely just a vehicle for the story, and the Shakespearean quotes and references that pepper the script serve more to describe the characters and their family life rather than drive the narrative forwards.

While the reasons for their estrangement emerge more fully in the later stages, many of the earlier exchanges feel like statements made, criticisms aired and positions defended in a very familiar way. More could be made of the Shakespearean subtext to explore the complex family dynamics throughout the play and to make full use of the interesting take on the standard premise.

Running time: 50 minutes (no interval).
Paradise in the Vault (The Annexe), 11 Merchant Street EH1 2QD (Venue 29).
Monday 11 – Sunday 24 August 2025.
Daily (Not Sun 17): 1.20pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Book here on EdFest.com.*