EDINBURGH 2016 - Review: HEADS UP, Summerhall, 13 August

Winner of the Fringe First 2016 award, Heads Up is the latest solo show from Kieran Hurley. Looking at five people's lives in a city before the apocalypse, this is an expertly crafted piece of theatre.

The stories we hear are nothing out of the ordinary - a supermarket worker, a 13-year-old girl who plays old computer games. It's the delivery of the stories and the brilliant writing that makes this piece so exceptional.

Heads Up is an hour-long poetic monologue for which the audience is almost eerily silent. The setting of the piece is vital and Hurley presents his story from a desk lit by candlelight. The atmospheric music and sound effects are controlled by Hurley on the desk and grow increasingly intense at crucial moments of the story.

Perhaps the most powerful of the characters for me was the young girl, who sends a picture to a boy at school that he then passes on to others. It was the part that should be least convincing coming from our narrator, but was probably the most effective. Each tale is interwoven into the bigger picture and the transitions between characters is clear.

While Heads Up has a couple of lighter moments, it is largely an intense piece of theatre that's been beautifully written.

Heads Up runs at Summerhall until 28 August.

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