The history of Edinburgh opens up so many opportunities for brilliant site specific work, which is rarely properly realised. David Leddys Sub Rosa succeeds where so many other pieces fail. From the time the audience is standing across from the Old Masonic Lodge, the tour guide is regaling the audience with a thorough history lesson of the Lodge, the Free Masons, Edinburgh and her theaters. All of the guides information is incorporated into a hypnotic story for the next hour and a half of creepy spaces and haunting monologues. The reason that this is so successful where most other site specific work fails is the extreme care and thought Mr. Leddy has placed into the use of the site. For example, many details of each space are referred to by each character in their increasingly dire monologues. That being said, some of the strongest work in the piece is in the transit between spaces, where the tour guide leads the group very slowly in a stylised manner while soundscapes of storms and beasts adding to the increasing dread as the evening progresses. The individual performances are uniformly engaging, all in remarkably intimate environments where their entrances feel like ghosts intruding the building. If you want one of the few pieces which will haunt, frighten, and burn itself into your memory of the fringe, make sure you see Sub Rosa.
