TheToll @

What would the Edinburgh festival be without an influx of American tourists, pounding the streets and telling everyone around them how much they love ‘Edinboro’ every August?

Some might say a better place.

However, that’s not to say that America doesn’t allow Edinburgh the best it has to offer and this certainly rings true this year in the form of the brilliantly adapted play The Toll.

Following on from the success of The Savio(u)r Theatre Company at the festival last year with At The Broken Places, this year The Toll, adapted from the blog of Tim Sullivan, follows the day to day lives of Timmy the Toll collector and his colleagues in the American North East as they encounter a multitude of people and outrageous scenarios.

With over two thousand tolls being taken every day, the audience gain an insight into the often obscure lives of customers, from one woman ‘handing’ over toll money with her feet despite having fully operational hands, to dealing with a family of Italians in a car who repeat only ‘grazie’ over and over, to the lives of the collectors themselves, racking up cocaine debts of $60,000, being accused of murder or mundanely eating several boxes of doughnuts in a day.

Tim Sullivan himself declares "dealing with that many people every day gives you a unique insight into the best and worst of human nature," something which everybody should be reminded of from time to time. This is why The Toll, a play of consistently funny encounters culminating in real questions of decency and humanity, is an Edinburgh must see.