11/08/23

Roundabout at Summerhall, Edinburgh

Joe (Elliot Norman) spends a lot of time sitting in his parked car, listening to the weird distorted noises which are the only sounds he can get from his radio. Sometimes he shares the space with his old friend, Emma (Rosie Dyer), recently returned to the area after losing her job. She’s now living with her parents and clearly isn’t enjoying the experience very much, but Joe gets it. He’s been living with his mum for ages and claims he’s getting along just fine, even if he’s not actually allowed to sit on the sofa after spilling chilli oil on it.

Sometimes, Joe sits in the car with an older man, the hapless Peter (John McNeil), who has a bit of a thing about Joe’s mum, and was recently rejected by her – which is awkward to say the least. Peter is fond of a drink. Rather too fond, as it happens. The car they are sitting in used to belong to him but now he’s lost his licence and has sold it to Joe at a knockdown price, though he still has a proprietorial attitude towards the vehicle.

The in-car conversation often turns to an absent friend, somebody called Polko. He’s not around any more and nobody seems quite sure where he’s gone…

Polko is a strange, sinewy sort of play, where the characters talk around things rather than coming to the nub of what they are actually discussing. At various points, it becomes clear that these three dispossessed characters are all unreliable narrators, each of them having to revisit what they’ve said earlier in order to tell the full story. We probably shouldn’t trust them – even if we want to.

And the mystery of the titular character really doesn’t fall into place until the very last scene.

Written by Angus Harrison and sparely directed by Emily Ling, this is an intriguing, slowly-unfolding story that ultimately raises more questions than it has answers for, but the performances are strong – especially McNeil’s brooding and mysterious loner, who never manages to be direct – and the sense of slowly-building intrigue keeps me guessing right up to the end.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney