Frank and Dolly

It's good to sometimes find a rather sweet, slightly old-fashioned, well-made play in the midst of all the physical theatre and one-person biographies on the Fringe. Such a one is Frank and Dolly, a funny yet touching two-hander set in the cut-throat world of ballroom dancing.

Dolly's knock-your-eyes-out ball gown has an unwanted addition down its front, the result of Frank projectile vomiting last night's kedgerie just as they were about to dance at the Blackpool International Ballroom Competition. Frank is hiding in a broom cupboard and Dolly is outside the door, alternately pleading, venting her anger, and crying.

Dolly keeps up a bluff North Country briskness but really she's intensely lonely and rates herself one of life's failures. Dilly Keane is very good, getting all the right laughs but slowly revealing the ache beneath. One of her bones of contention with Frank is the latter's obsession with with Gene Kelly, as opposed to her passion for Fred Astaire.

Not that Frank is like either of those leading men; for a start, she's a woman. Lizzie Hopley, who also wrote the play, is terrific as the edgy, maybe not that good, dance partner. She seriously looks as though she might be about to throw up in the play's early stages and she's heart-rending when she brings herself to confess her love for her partner, not realising that Dolly has gone for a welcome relief.

The illusion of two rooms keeping the characters in worlds of isolation is expertly maintained. It reaches its apogee when the two do their dance separately yet together in a moment of sheer cheesy beauty. This entertaining look at a relationship at crisis point, delightfully played by two actresses pulling out all the emotional stops, may not be cutting edge but it delivers what it promises and it's very satisfying.