Futureproof @ The Traverse, 6-28 Aug

A touring freak show has fallen on hard times. The public no longer seek the thrills they offer. Encamped outside town, resources stretched to breaking point, they have had to kill and eat the horse.

At this juncture Lynda Radley's Futureproof begins. “Originally I was interested in writing a play about reality television”, she began. “And about issues of voyeurism; what it is we get out of these experiences of looking at people different from us.”

“We have always been interested in looking at people in this way,” she continues. Quickly realising that a less specific time and place “was going to be more fertile ground,” Radley abandoned the modern age. “It's a world of my own devising: time works in a slightly magical way, place works in a slightly magical way. The characters are everywhere and nowhere at once.”

The production is a collaboration between Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre and the Dundee Rep, with the latter providing members of its renowned ensemble. The Traverse – 'Scotland's New Writing Theatre' commissioned Radley's after several earlier successes, especially her 2007 solo show The Art of Swimming.

The collaboration allowed Futureproof to fulfil the scale its outlandish theme deserved. Audiences should look forward to something grand: “With this play I set out to be big, ambitious and theatrical. I made a conscious choice to write something that fills a main stage.” Director Dominic Hill certainly knows how to do that, returning to the Rep for the first time since his acclaimed production of Peer Gynt almost four years ago.

Radley feels her work is in good hands, recalling “When I was writing the play, Peer Gynt was happening, and I remember thinking if it could be a co-production between the rep and the trav that would be amazing.” The playwright has seen her wish realised and audiences will be able to observe this strange tale of freak shows and voyeurism in Edinburgh and Dundee.