The atmosphere feels different in Casey Jay Andrews’ (almost) one-woman storytelling show. In Summerhall’s Dissection Room, a large, high space more familiar as a concert venue, her audience are assembled on chairs in the round, with Andrews’ microphone at one end of the transverse space between and her musical collaborator Jack Brett’s desk at the other. He plays guitar and electronics, adding background atmosphere to Andrews’ tale.
In the centre of the room is a standard lamp which she turns on and off, requesting that when the light goes off the audience close their eyes. This will recreate, Andrews tells us, the darkness of the Brecon Beacons caves she used to go potholing in during her late teens. She tells us about the massive cave entrance of Porth yr Ogof, the experience of scrambling through narrow rock passages to get to vaulting caverns, and the terror of being in a cave when it starts to flood.
Parallel to this, she tells a more personal story of memory and bereavement, in which the act of finding one’s way back to the surface is a metaphor for recovery from grief. As a previous Fringe First winner and a designer for Punchdrunk, Andrews makes the piece look beautiful and feel transporting, but the way she uses that technique of switching between on-mic theatricality and off-mic informality while jumping between narrative threads is distracting here, breaking up momentum just as one strand is getting going.
The Quiet Earth Beneath, Summerhall, until 25 Aug, 7.30pm