CROSS ROAD BLUES. To 29 August.

Edinburgh

CROSS ROAD BLUES

Sweet on the Grassmarket To 29 August 2005
9.25pm-10.25pm No interval

TICKETS: 0870 241 0136
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 August

Blues legend needs more diabolical power.This venue is within the Grassmarket's Apex Hotel, which like many new hotels has small, low-ceilinged meeting-rooms. This makes for a clamminess but also a claustrophobia that could work well for this version of the famous story of Blues-singer Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at a cross-roads come midnight in a Faustian return for the power to sing hell out of the blues.

In this uncredited version the Black Johnson sits by the cross-roads, aware of the legend that other wannabe singers have made this pact and have the Devil tune their guitars in return for their soul.

Though the Devil's suposed to arrive as a big Black man, here it's as a fresh-faced, smartly-scrubbed and combed young White one, swigging what looks less like a bottle of bourbon or Jack Daniels than of scotch (so at least this Devil has taste).

What he doesn't have much of the time is focus or force. The anonymously-performed Johnson has more of these qualities, but the production's greatly in need of tighter, more varied and pointed direction.

At present, despite some key moments standing out (the Devil fingering the guitar's tuning-pegs, his sudden change into rhyming lyrics), this is a slow journey covering a short distance to an obvious destination.

Cast and credits not available

2005-08-16 18:36:10