EDINBURGH FRINGE: Windblown at the Queen’s Hall*****

As a singer-songwriter, Karine Polwart has won many awards. But nothing prepared me for her gift as a storyteller.

In Windblown she imagines what a palm, which has been contained in a glasshouse at Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens for the last 200 years, is thinking as it approaches its chainsaw demise. Too old and unsteady to move and too weak to survive, it looks back on its life, while the stunning backdrop of a 3D image of a huge palm is magnificently lit against wind, rain, night and day.

Throughout the show Polwart gives us her own account of befriending the palm while it was still standing. But then, as the palm, and accompanied by pianist Dave Milligan, she bursts into echoing cries and the most touching songs in which the palm sings that time is nearly over and asks, let me go.

A hauntingly beautiful and unbelievably moving show.