Delphine

A story in which Amélie goes Cockney could look painfully familiar on an Edinburgh Fringe stage. But Delphine is a tired story refreshed by a moving central performance by its writer Clare Rebekah Pointing.

Delphine is 30 and has never been close to a relationship. She has experienced life through the eyes of others; conceptions of what life should look like rather than what it’s been for her, which is to say, sheltered. She’s totally liberated when sticking her middle finger up for the first time. And when she meets Bill, the stars finally align.

Pointing is sweetly convincing but also fierce in the role, only for her character to be hurt in the same way that emotional trauma injures even the steeliest of hearts. It’s all about the performance here and Pointing has created a superbly three-dimensional character, full of wit, eccentricity and resilience.

Understandably, this show is a delicate balancing act. We need enough trivial details about Delphine’s life for the pay off to work, but this also creates a show packed with banal details. It relies so heavily on convention that it feels too scripted and regimented. There may be some obscure references to Madame de Staël’s 19th-century epistolary novel of the same name, but if indeed Delphine takes inspiration from this text, it’s a touch too removed. If it doesn’t, it could be aided by greater experimentation with form, as at the moment, it follows an ultra-linear storytelling trajectory.