Arlington - Traverse Theatre ★★★

The Scottish premiere of Enda Walsh’s Arlington comes wrapped in style, intensity and ambition — but while the performers give it everything, the production rarely becomes as gripping as its dystopian world promises.

Inside a surveillance-state tower, Isla waits for her number to be called. Her only contact is a disembodied operator on the other side of the wall. Today, that voice is a new one — and the smallest spark of unpredictability disrupts a system built to crush it.

As Isla, Aisha Goodman is the play’s standout. She has terrific presence: focused, expressive, and capable of grounding Walsh’s looping, feverish text in something human. Even when the script drifts into abstraction, she’s the one keeping the room alive. In a sharper, more dramatically propulsive piece, she’d be magnetic.

Alex Austin gives the Young Man an anxious, well-judged edge — part bureaucratic foot soldier, part unwilling witness to the system’s cruelties. His vocal performance carries much of the early going, though the relationship between the pair feels more conceptual than charged.

The full-dance second act, led by Jack Anderson, is the play’s boldest swing. Anderson commits physically, but the sequence feels like an atmospheric detour rather than a dramatic escalation. Its mood is striking, but its purpose less so.

What the production excels at is world-building. Emma Jones’ lighting, Rob Willoughby’s visuals and Anna Yates’ harsh, metallic set conjure a convincingly airless environment — a place where hope has to fight for oxygen. It’s often a more compelling environment than the narrative unfolding within it.

Walsh’s language — dense, spiralling, imagistic — is unmistakably his, but here it too often dissipates rather than tightens. The ideas are rich, the themes resonant, but scenes run long without building tension. The promised slide into something “terrifying and sublime” lands in flickers rather than shocks.

And yet, there’s no doubting the commitment onstage. Goodman’s strong central performance offers the show its beating heart. Arlington is atmospheric, intelligent and at times haunting — but never fully compelling.

A stylish production with a superb lead turn; one only wishes that the narrative gripped harder.