Joe is a haunted man. Even awake, he is haunted by dreams: of a labyrinth of corridors weaving through his past, leading to his aunt's house; the girl he knew when he was 10; that same girl laid out on a marble slab, slathered in morticians' makeup.
Joey Tremblay's monologue is richly evocative of small-town America and the sickliness seething under its surface. Of course, this territory is familiar from David Lynch's movies, but Tremblay brings to it his own neatly poetic turns of phrase. We meet the girl's mother, "her wrinkled face painted like a porcelain doll", and visit a house where "a great crumpled drunk snores on the stairs". The language is so suggestive that it needs very little to bring it to life.
It's a mystery, then, why director Jonathan Christenson has chosen to play his production at full tilt. Chris Craddock's performance as Joe, and the myriad characters disturbing his mind, is committed but also overwrought, leaving nothing to the imagination. Passion smothers every line; as though that were not enough, echoey voice effects are employed almost constantly. The language emerges bruised, beaten to a pulp, and the audience is left exhausted.
· Until August 16. Box office: 0131-226 6522.
