Muster Station: Leith Academy | Grid Iron | Edinburgh International Festival | Leith Academy | 14/08/22 | Jess Shurte

The Guardian 19 August 2022

Climate campaigners have been sounding the alarm for decades, but only now the days are getting hot and the rivers are running dry have they had much impact. We are simple creatures, programmed to respond to visible threat and bad at dealing with the theoretical, however well founded. That being the case, Muster Station: Leith makes a convincing job of turning abstract hypothesis into tangible experience. A few more steps down our apocalyptic road and this is what it could be like.

As is the tradition of Grid Iron theatre company, it is an immersive performance in which the audience are cast as refugees from an environmental catastrophe. Waters are rising and we are less than a week away from a devastating tidal wave. We find ourselves in the school hall, now a processing centre run by the UK Department for Evacuation, where stern officials bark questions at us and make us wait. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).