The Last Drop review – everything is rotten in this dark domestic comedy

Zoo Playground, Edinburgh Dante Passarelli’s play, part of the São Paulo Showcase, is an atmospheric hour borrowing themes from Hamlet This year’s fringe variously puts Hamlet in the Big Brother house with Lady Macbeth, makes him “ Prince of Sweden ” in an Italian two-hander and grinds the play into what Polonius might call a “tragical-comical” swipe at the meat industry .

Dante Passarelli’s The Last Drop, part of the festival’s São Paulo Showcase , borrows the opening and closing lines of Shakespeare’s masterpiece and pursues similar themes of madness, revenge and surveillance in a story where everything, not just something, is rotten.

The opening tableau resembles a murder scene: has death-stare Cynthia (Fernanda Zancopé) done away with her husband, Gilberto (Ernani Sanchez), who lies sprawled on the floor? Apparently not: as he rises, and they resume their bickering, you realise wider crimes are at play in this densely packed city where new buildings rise around them and construction often involves corruption.

Suspicion is rife: they have lived for years in this apartment block with its peeling wallpaper and hold their upstairs neighbour, so wasteful with water, responsible for the mouldy stain on their ceiling.

At Zoo Playground, Edinburgh , until 30 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews Continue reading...