The Idiot Colony

There's a sharp contrast between the frantic pace and boisterousness of the Fringe at lunchtime and the slow, subdued movements of The Idiot Colony, but then the three residents introduced are in no hurry.

Their routine involves popping pills, being given harsh, humiliating sponge baths and endlessly styling and re-styling hair in the salon attached to the asylum where they have been sent as a result of their sexual behaviour.

The explanations for their confinement are revealed gradually, through carefully chosen words and mesmerising images. The trio of actresses use a handful of props including towels and combs to convey both their pasts and the soul-crushing monotony of their present circumstances.

The relationship between physical and psychological cleanliness is a central theme: one woman repeats the mantra 'dirty house, dirty mind' while another physically re-creates her lost love using her own body and the third secretes pebbles about her person like forbidden kisses.

The visual storytelling is at turns beautiful and horrifying, and occasionally both simultaneously. Hair is initially used to conceal the hollow-eyed expressions of the identically-dressed performers, but later it somehow hides clues and secrets.

The performances are stunning, with three subtly different expressions ' pleading, defiant, resigned ' evoking an unimaginable catalogue of suffering in the not-so-distant past.

Reviewed at The Pleasance during the Edinburgh Fringe 2008.