Many visitors to the city attending Mark Hannah’s tender, funny trilogy of monologues may be surprised to learn ‘the Athens of the North’ is one of Edinburgh’s nicknames. Reputedly that’s because of all the Grecian columns and the fact the city is built on seven hills, but in Hannah’s linked stories there’s also an element of Greek tragedy throughout.
In his first piece he’s a separated father who drives a van for a demanding mattress delivery company, who’s driven past the point of fury when his desperate race to hear his daughter perform for the Lord Provost at St Giles Cathedral is interrupted by a Just Stop Oil protest. In the second, he’s a young English meteorology student who meets a woman from Edinburgh on holiday and misguidedly tries to carry their romance on afterwards, leaving him alone with the city. In the third, he’s a sharp-tongued elderly woman journeying home to Leith through a much-changed city, her advanced dementia blurring past and present.
Hannah delivers each character’s words and builds their world perfectly, with the first and third delivered in an unforced working-class Scots which is extremely welcome on the Fringe. What’s even more satisfying in that regard is that these aren’t tales of misery, but rather a powerful, bittersweet window on the lives of people who all have rich inner dreams and struggles.
Athens of the North, Scottish Storytelling Centre, until 23 Aug, various times