Meet Me At Dawn, Edinburgh Festival review: Haunting elegy on love and loss

Zinnie Harris's new play, a co-production between the Edinburgh International Festival and the Traverse, is a powerful riff on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth.

As the play – set on a bare rock with the sound of crashing waves around – starts, Helen and Robyn have washed up on the beach after a boating accident. For one awful moment, Robyn thought she has lost Helen, but then her partner appears out of the mist.

Relieved to have survived, the couple recount how they came to be here – a nice day out on the water in a hired boat, time enough to be back home for supper, and what strategy they'll use to get back to the mainland from this weird-looking outcrop.

But all is not what it seems. As Robyn says, “Anything I say you have to ignore”, we register this is taking place in an altered state – possibly a dream, maybe even an hallucination, as she tries to make sense of strange events occurring around her and the troubling memories interrupting her thoughts. Gradually we realise that one of them is dead, and what we are seeing is a woman going through the stages of grief.

Traverse artistic director Orla O'Loughlin's production allows the story to breathe, while Sharon Duncan-Brewster (Helen) and Neve McIntosh (Robyn) give exquisitely measured performances in this haunting elegy on love and loss.

Until Aug 27, Traverse Theatre; eif.co.uk