De Fuut

Summerhall (Venue 26)

On a Fringe full of men noisily denouncing themselves, the Belgian playwright and performer Bastiaan Vandendriessche’s relatively quiet monologue stands out as uniquely creepy and distressing, to the point where it should perhaps come with a trigger warning. I don’t doubt his brave intentions, as he conjures up the character of a self-deceiving scout leader who not only takes part in abusive initiation ceremonies at camp, but indulges in extreme sexual fantasies about two teenage girls in his group, some of which may or may not have come true.

Vandendriessche makes occasional claims about the complicity of the audience. But with no real clarity about whether he is mocking the delusions of his character, or actually inviting us to seek to understand and accept his sexuality, the show drifts on in a sea of sub-pornographic imagery that seems increasingly gratuitous, the more we become aware that in the end, it is going nowhere.

Until tomorrow. Today 7:45pm.