Voices from beyond time

0 Thrown creates a refreshing space for late-night contemplation and stillness in a busy festival

unclear what is happening when and where.

At the end, we learn that the piece is based on interviews with older women, but it has more in common with the philosophical hypereality of Dennis Potter’s Cold Lazarus than the dry naturalism associated with conventional verbatim theatre. Jill Rutland’s charismatic performance

draws out themes of ageing, memory and death to create the mood, if not the structure, of a ghost story. “Nothing bad is going to happen”, is repeated towards the end – but it doesn’t entirely convince.

Striking but disconnected images, including the sky folding in on itself and a child deciding to grow up, are left

hanging in the air. It’s not a show that feels a need to fully explain itself – and the doctor and her work remain tantalisingly mysterious – but as an existential experience, it’s a piece that creates a refreshing space for late-night contemplation and stillness in a busy festival.

SALLY STOTT

Until 19 August. Today 8:50pm.

Charlotte Fox plays a struggling actor in this one-woman show. After being told that her face is too fat to play Cinderella, she takes advantage of her agent’s discount at the International Wellbeing Convention and plunges headfirst down the rabbit hole into the world of hyper-fitness, food obsession and “personal transformation”.

Fox’s energy is indomitable, and she attacks her theme with a diverse range of polished theatrical tactics including dance, physical theatre and comedy. And the world of wellness is ripe for satire, from the “food recovery” expert, swigging secretly from her fruitshake mixed with vodka, to the sexobsessed fitness instructor and the yoga teacher with his vegan dog.

But there is something darker at the heart of all this which sits less easily with the comedy: the effects on those drawn into this world, embracing each new fad, recording each achievement with a new profile picture for Instagram, waiting obsessively for their followers’ approval. These are the people for whom diet pills and promises turn to bingeeating and bulimia. And having shown us all of this, Fox seems reluctant to offer a clear conclusion, or indeed create one for her character. SUSAN MANSFIELD

Until 14 August. Today 1:10pm.