Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jo Sargeant, Claire-Louise English.

When an abandoned baby comes into their lives, the daughter and father team that live inside the ruins of a junk yard are given a chance to nurture and care for something other than where life has treated them with disrespect and the cold shoulder of indifference by their fellow man.

The unexpected joy of the Edinburgh Fringe often comes along with the moral tale attached, the play that might not grab the attention from the rampant flyer-ing or the big name in which bums on the old seats are assured. However, much like a babe in arms gathering strength in an outpost on the furthest stages of the old town, is cared for by all who come across it, the smiles of content in its company, the satisfaction of knowing it has had concentration and thought poured into it; it is enough to know all this and believe that it will be successful.

Hot Coals Theatre’s Finders Keepers is one such production on during the Edinburgh Fringe in which the early morning dust in the eyes will be firmly dislodged and left to fester on the streets under the careful watch of Arthur’s Seat, so shaken by the innate beauty that the show offers, the splendour in the ruff outer shell, that those that catch Jo Sargeant and Claire-Louise English as they rummage through fly encrusted porridge and the hording of paper, will be left in no doubt just what Edinburgh offers during its summer. A chance to be in the company of salvation, of being in a place where everything can be cared for and like an abandoned child, left in the hands of two seemingly dirty tramps eking out a living on the edge of an abyss, the play is the weapon that will capture the heart of those that look it in the eye.

Finders Keepers might mean an early start but it is one that is worth it, a play that breaks convention, that was devised for those with hearing issues but one in which the character of it is so well developed, it simply needs no words, except those of praise.

Ian D. Hall