Finished With Engines

It was perhaps to be expected that the aftermath of 9/11 would bring forth its own monsters. Despite the lessons which might have been learned from the conduct of war in Vietnam and "the former Yugoslavia," the simple solution has always tended to find favour in the military mind.

Thus the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA); the assertion that technology would win wars; that skill and judgement on the battlefield, and at least by implication that capricious intangible, luck, no longer counted. The onward march of technical sophistication would prove unstoppable. "Events, dear boy, events," was the late Harold Macmillan's shorthand for the unpredictability of history, and events do indeed appear to have halted the charge in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The project to create Islamic states acceptable to western regimes (or at least to one western regime in particular) seems to founder in the mire of grubby reality, though the rhetoric rumbles on.

Trapped in this particular time-warp, Megan (Stephanie Viola) and Hemingway (Drew Friedman) are a couple of navy personnel whiling away the hours on a barge with, in Megan's case, dreams of empire. The slow fade of these dreams occupies a large chuck of Finished with Engines, although fascination with some aspects of the RMA suggests the rejection of the grand project is not entirely unambivalent.

There are some lovely moments in between waiting for Armageddon, which the actors exploit to the full. Finished with Engines is a tightly structured piece of theatre, but the grand themes and possible theories it hints at in the title and writing are not fully explored in the time available.

Times: August 1-9, times vary - see fringe programme for details
Copyright Bill Dunlop August 2008, published on EdinburghGuide.com, August 2008