All human knowledge is just a smudge on the windscreen of the universe, AETHER tells us with a grin. Quick, intellectual and confident that their audience will keep up, this new work from writer/director Emma Howlett celebrates the dizzying, vertiginous joy of the unknown. TheatreGoose’s charismatic four-person cast fizz with energy, collaborating and colliding as they show us four women on the cliff-edge of an existential crisis.
Sophie, a physics PhD student, is hungry for answers and hungrier still for more questions. Egypt, 415 AD: brilliant mathematician Hypatia values educating others above all else, including her safety. Victorian teenager Florence can conjure spirits (or, leading scientists think she can, which is basically the same thing), while Adelaide ‘Queen of Magic’ Hermann can catch bullets between her fingers, but without the fanfare she deserves.
Do we need to see something to believe in it? Do we first need to understand something, in order for it to become visible? This ambitious hour careens towards an ever-moving horizon with surreal, show-time choreography and sharp set design (just a magician’s curtain and a lecturer’s OHP), and although AETHER is sometimes nearer a TED talk about magic than a magic show, you’ll see the stars differently afterwards.
AETHER, Summerhall, until 25 Aug (not 11, 18), 7.15pm