This was truly one of the worst things I have seen at the Fringe this year. Both myself and my friend struggled to retain consciousness. I find it difficult to see how it got more than one star. There was much to criticise, none of which has been mentioned here: the awful staging, the lacklustre cast and the poor script to name but a few problems.nTo call it ‘brilliance’ suggests a lack of experience or theatrical knowledge on the reviewer’s part.

I don’t know what affliction Stephanie has that so affects her sight and hearing but when we went to see Recursion the acting was spine tingling good, the atmosphere created had the entire audience enraptured to the point where an old dear on the row in front of us was nearly moved to tears. I would recommend to anyone at the fringe. Very enjoyable.

After seeing it for the second time today, I also fail to find any value in Stephanie’s comments. Maybe you can hang onto the point about the staging, if it wasnt for the fact that it is the fringe….and then that point also loses any gravitas.

I enjoyed all the performances, and I would greatly dispute any claims that anyone predicted the twist. This is even more brilliant with hindsight, given the subtle hints in the dialogue.

Was easily in my top 3 things I saw this fringe festival.

After seeing it for the second time today, I also fail to find any value in Stephanie’s comments. Maybe you can hang onto the point about the staging, if it wasnt for the fact that it is the fringe….and then that point also loses any gravitas.

I enjoyed all the performances, and I would greatly dispute any claims that anyone predicted the twist. This is even more brilliant with hindsight, given the subtle hints in the dialogue.

Was easily in my top 3 things I saw this fringe festival.

I didn’t expect much, given the spartan staging and youthful cast. However, this was a shallow, baseless opinion that has everything to do with first impressions and nothing at all to do with a meaningful interpretation of the play.

The acting was nothing short of astounding in places, and the cast carried off a tightly plotted, interesting story with a perfectly judged, understated delivery that conveyed with precision everything it was meant to.

Given the nature of the narrative, it must have been tempting to throw up gargantuan characters in an attempt to convey the furious emotions in the story, and lend credibility to the “play within a play” device. Ducking this temptation effortlessly, the characters spoke softly, economically and as a result expanded to devastating effect in the audience’s collective imagination. The asceticism of the staging mirrored this beautifully, blowing away my previous opinion about the set.

Our various sympathies and value-judgments were manipulated effortlessly by the deliciously stark script, which was delivered to near perfection by a cast that never over-stated, and never over-committed to a line. Recursion is a play that has a lot to shout about, and for me, it was made all the more devastating for its bare staging and whispered verbal shadow play.

Its brilliance could be contested by someone who, for example, wished to dispute the philosophical message of the play, the role of the (divine?) black-shirted narrator, the role of colour in the play or the sympathy we are perhaps supposed to feel for the protagonist (the murderer-playwright). To quibble over a conscious choice to eschew gimmicks and bangs and flashing lights in favour of a crisp and disciplined presentation is to take the play on the level on which I took it when I first wandered in (and before I had even seen it) – impossibly shallow and thus valueless.