Returning to a play you adored five years ago is like meeting up with an old lover. Will you recognise each other? Will sparks still fly? Will new circumstances change everything?
When Mark Thomson's hostage drama played at Musselburgh's Brunton Theatre in 1999, it was seen by so few people that my enthusiasm for it felt like a delusion. Now, revived at the Lyceum to open Thomson's second season as artistic director, A Madman Sings to the Moon proves to be so much more than a heat- of-the-moment thing.
The only difference is that this brilliant play has found the big, confident, public voice it deserved all those years ago. That's because, unlike a lot of work that is lauded by the critics but seen by few, it is a generous, accessible piece of drama with broad popular appeal. While there is a very funny script and a simple premise - man enters cafe with gun and holds customers hostage - Thomson also has something of importance to say.
His political purpose is similar to that of 7:84's current show, Private Agenda, a verbatim collage of angry voices from the frontline of Scotland's public services, where the public finance initiative has turned colleagues into competitors. Movingly dramatising the same idea, Thomson argues that such economic pressures force us to define ourselves by our jobs, status and possessions, instead of by our human relationships. We forget how to talk to each other and people get hurt.
The damaged person in question is Kenny Wright, a social misfit desperate for stability in a volatile world. The ransom for his cafe hold-up is not cash, but communication: only when his prisoners have truly revealed themselves can the siege be over. Tony Cownie is astonishing in this role, at turns lucid, funny, deranged, perceptive and heartbreaking. He is the dazzling highlight of a superlative production.
· Until October 9. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
