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	The Warren (venue website) Theatre 15 May, 8:00pm-9:00pm; 16 May, 6:00pm-7:00pm, 8:00pm-9:00pm
Family-friendly. Suitable for all ages.

It’s a simple, sad story, but it’s joyfully told.  So said FringeGuru’s Carmel Doohan, reviewing Translunar Paradise on its Edinburgh run last year.  As an ageing man struggles to confront his life-partner’s death, he escapes to a personal paradise of cherished memories – where his departed wife, in one final act of love, teaches him how to let go.

There are no spoken words in this highly-physical piece; two masked actors dance and mime their roles, to the strains of a haunting ballad and the whistle of an accordion.  Tiny gestures convey a lifetime of love, while mimed shapes and structures recall the rituals of companionship.  There’s some pain as well, and a powerful evocation of war, but it’s a deliberately unexceptional story.  Behind the masks, Carmel wrote, the man and woman could be any of us.

It’s all the work of Anglo-Canadian ensemble Theatre ad Infinitum, whose mournfully bleak production The Big Smoke earned a slate of plaudits in Brighton last time round.  But while last year’s play mined the depths of despair, Translunar Paradise – even as it confronts death – affirms what’s best in life.  We’re far from the only ones to have sung its praise in Edinburgh… so book early, and let’s hope it travels well.

Read our full review of this show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011.