I Kissed A Frog And It Gave Me Herpes

The venue is packed to standing room only, and a thin curtain hangs expectantly across an archway in Espionage's Pravda bar. It's not a normal scene in this busy Edinburgh club. And this is certainly not a normal Espionage crowd: these people are here to see theatre. The lights dim, the curtains twitch, the players enter and the show begins.

In a fusion of rhymed verse and spoken word the two performers, with guitar accompaniment, weave their tale. The verse is delivered with gusto and scoops the audience into the story. This is storytelling like it used to be, the art of sitting around the fire and spinning magical tales.

The play deals with the death of romance – how one woman's dreams of finding her "prince" and being "the one" are ground underfoot by her own failings and the cruel absurdity of the modern age. Instead of heroes she's wooed by phone-sex geeks into viking re-enactment; instead of a chance encounter with a stunning man, it's the sleazy guy who batters down her resistance.

The strange title is well-suited here – on one hand the “frog prince” fairy tale that many women hope for, and on the other the callousness of a world in which such dreams are always confounded.

These themes creep up, steadily and unnoticed, through the laughter. Witty, intelligent and funny, don't let the fact that this production is free fool you – it is a great little piece of theatre that will win your heart, then slap you in the face.