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The Herald
Neil Cooper
Star rating: *****
Edinburgh is strange outwith August. Vanishing Point's brilliantly realised piece, set in a future Auld Reekie where the Leith of old has been razed and super-hospitals for rich people built in its place, makes it even stranger. Via a post James Kelman-style interior monologue delivered by Sandy Grierson, with Rosalind Sydney playing an array of Leith Walk grotesques, we witness a man's return to a city he barely recognises - but one where the natives are quietly revolting against the dystopian nightmare vision.
In director Matthew Lenton's hands the drama is electric enough, but by setting its bleakly funny wanderings to a magnificent live soundtrack, performed by a seven-piece Kosovan band whose keening mix of heart-breaking string-led laments and frenetic chases through the boy's head are woven into the action, the results are jaw-dropping. There are moments in Grierson's dark voyage down Leith Walk that resemble Apocalypse Now, so evocative is it of a world out of step. More significantly, perhaps, the quiet revolution the boy's father sets in motion recalls the Princes Street riots during the G8 summit.
But this is a rites-of-passage tale, too, and the perfect answer to anyone who says the Fringe is irrelevant to Edinburgh residents. On one level, its advocacy of smoking yourself to death looks a tad reactionary. On a far greater level, however, this is a call to arms. It's about the death of community, how the gloss of bright new buildings built on foundations of greed is put before people, and about collective acts of free will. It's also a world-class piece of artistry and craft.
Every tin-pot city councillor and empire-building numpty squatting in Holyrood should be dragged along to see this show. As should everyone else. You'll never see the festival city in the same light again.
The Scotsman
Joyce McMillan
Star rating: ****
Vanishing Point's Subway - the latest production from Matthew Lenton's gifted Glasgow-based group - is also a show about reconciliation, although of a more familiar and personal kind. Written by the company with playwright Nicola McCartney, Subway is a "musical adventure" that picks up where the last scene of Trainspotting leaves off, as a young guy born and brought up in Leith returns home to Scotland on a mission to find his old dad, and to have just one meaningful conversation with him before it's too late. The twist is that this is not today's Leith, but the Leith of 2030 or so, where the rising waters of the Forth lap round the lower stories of the shoreline tower-blocks, the cityscape is dominated by a massive new private hospital, and ordinary guys like our hero are nagged and nannied by spookily well-informed security cameras and vending machines.
All of this dystopian detail is blissfully funny and well-observed. Matthew Lenton brings his usual barrage of theatrical brilliance to the telling of the tale, which involves a seven-strong on-stage Kosovan band, a simple but telling design by Kai Fischer, and a brilliant central performance from Sandy Grierson.
The story loses impetus in the end, dissolving into a sentimental joke about the smoking ban that doesn't quite measure up; and at the performance I saw, the sound-balance was appalling, the music swamping many of the monologues. But Subway has barrowloads of style, haunting futuristic imagery and a fine anarchic spirit; if it fails to continue Vanishing Point's huge success in making theatre to attract younger audiences, then my name's Irvine Welsh.
British Theatre Guide
Philip Fisher
Star rating: *****
The plot may be a little simplistic but this dystopian science fiction thriller with ironic overtones is so brilliantly presented that this becomes entirely forgivable.
The cast consists of two actors, Sandy Grierson shaven headed as Patrick or Scruggs and Rosalind Sydney playing a dozen or more other parts. However, they are complemented by a seven strong Kossovan folk rock band who become major players, in every sense, helping the drama to build to a fascinating finale.
They also maintain the pace from the start, occasionally getting over-enthusiastic and drowning out parts of the text. The music though has been well chosen to reflect the action and is worthwhile in its own right.
The story is set 25 years in the future and follows the return of our hero from Hull to visit his father in Trainspotting country at the foot of Edinburgh's Leith Walk. The atmosphere though has far more in common with A Clockwork Orange or 1984 than Irvine Welsh's novel.
By this time, the Euro is the currency of choice and cigarettes are banned in Edinburgh, which has become a totalitarian state where the goal of every citizen is to get into the luxury private hospitals.
Scruggs and his pal Puggs then launch a subversive underground guerrilla war on globalisation and authoritarianism, taking up the baton laid down by our hero's old man.
There is much subtle humour in the script and the pacing is perfect, with the band racing us along but still knowing how to make sad moments poignant.
This is a really refreshing and vibrant piece of theatre that will appeal to the video game generation with its speed, loudness and designer Kai Fisher's most effective lighting.
At the end of a rousing 90 minutes, this reviewer's first reaction was to see if it was possible to repeat the experience. That chance will come when Subway transfers to the Lyric in Hammersmith next month.
Metro
Alan Chadwick
Star rating: ****
Winner of Best Actor at the recent Critics Award for Theatre In Scotland for playing the title role in Communicado's Fergus Lamont, Sandy Grierson delivers an equally compelling star turn here as disaffected hoodie Scruggs in this 'dystopian musical adventure' from Vanishing Point.
Taking the politics of today – the smoking ban; concerns over CCTV surveillance; an ever-widening gap between rich and poor; feral youth with no future; gated communities – and placing them in the future, Matthew Lenton's production is a fast-paced, imaginatively conceived slice of modern urban angst.
Its dark vision of a divided society is enlivened by moments of gallows humour and a seven-strong Kosovo band, who deliver a quite breathtaking running musical commentary on the action – even if intermittently they succeed in drowning out some of the dialogue.
Scruggs has returned home to Leith after 10 years away, and is on a mission to get to know his dad better – just one of many roles splendidly brought to life by Rosalind Sydney in this two-hander.
Once there, he finds everything has changed. His home turf is overshadowed by a superstructure for the rich, the King William V memorial hospital, outside which the poor clasp lottery tickets that might gain them access to health care. The peasants may be revolting, but the show is anything but. In fact, it's not to be missed.
