Attempt 3.4

Attempt 3.4's brave effort to create a different show every night is very much in the original, innovative spirit of the Fringe: the show isn't so much amateur improv as a performance that's devised on the spot every night. Tonight, the four performers undertake to "build a city," unnervingly clad in blue boiler suits and orange hard hats, while they subject us to their innermost thoughts and confessions along the way.

However, as events wear on, it becomes increasingly clear that Attempt 3.4 isn't so much a bold attempt at taking the Fringe back to its roots as a fruitless exercise in dramatic experimentation - a personal journey that the audience are never really invited to share. While there is a great sense of undestanding between the performers, each being clearly aware of the others' dramatic limits, they don't really ever connect with the audience, which is almost inexcusable in such a small and intimate venue. There is no real logic to the proceedings and the production simply doesn't create a formula that is solid enough to work every night. Moreover, it's never made clear whether or not the proclaimed goal of the evening - the building of a city - has been achieved, a fundmental flaw in Attempt 3.4's self-aware evolution as a 'piece of art' that's sure to leave many feeling deflated.

In fact, much of Attempt 3.4 feels like a rehearsal for something bigger, but the production simply fails to build up into anything of real consequence - at least, on this partiular evening. Still, some timely comic moments and quick thinking rescue the performance from complete banality - and from the lonely depths of a one-star review.