The Outsider

Camus's L’Étranger is an unlikely source for a clown show, but Finnish illusionist Janne Raudaskoski deals in a dourer school of magic than most. He plays a green-haired alien who's crashed his spaceship in Edinburgh and feels bewildered by what he finds. But although his face never shifts from a bemused pout, there's plenty to astonish in this tricked-out production. Two giant screens show life-size doppelgangers that Raudaskoski waves to, shares beers with and even tries to kill off. The wizardry doesn't stop there: the production bombards the audience with at least five glitter cannons, bubbles for each audience member, a light-up drone, a laser gun, and even a motorbike roaring across the stage.

But ironically, the one thing this overloaded performance is short of is actual clowning. Raudaskoski is oddly static and inexpressive, a wide-eyed impresario who'll do anything to entertain except make a fool of himself.

For long periods of time he disappears and leaves us in the hands of his two green-haired avatars, blinking on their screens in bewilderment. The performance is loosely structured into life themes like work, love or drinking, with short films showing Raudaskoski experiencing them first hand. Their monochrome bleakness effectively conjures all the alienation you'd expect from a bona fide alien, but it's hard to engage with their slow-moving digital world.

There's a lot to astonish in Raudaskoski's screen-filled trickery, but it's an oddly colourless wonder. He tries to replace the heart he's carefully removed from his performance with flotillas of bubbles: magic, without warmth.