In 1990, Anthony Minghella wrote a poem called Mosaic, to be performed by an actor and a dancer. It's a collage of reminiscences, random fragments of data that suddenly coalesce into something meaningful. With a flash of insight, the poem's female speaker pieces together the evidence - voiceless phone calls, mood swings, unaccounted absences - and sees them as part of a tapestry of adultery woven by the men in her life.
Short and intense, the poem captures the moment when chaos gives way to clarity and the shock of betrayal hits home. Captivated by Minghella's exploration of love and loss, Glasgow's Reeling & Writhing company uses the poem to top and tail a play about two women trying to "make sense of things that won't make sense". Co-written by Tim Nunn and poet Elspeth Murray, Good Reason is about a newlywed daughter cottoning on to her husband's infidelity at the same time as clocking the serial adultery of her father. Confronting her mother only seems to complicate a relationship based on evasion and denial.
As a detail in some bigger drama, the two character studies - given tough performances by Gillian Lees and Linda Duncan McLaughlin in Katherine Morley's fluid production - would carry some weight. But in isolation, they lose power to a flimsy dramatic structure that covers little more ground than the poem that inspired them.
With the central dilemma established at the start, there's little to reveal. The story takes its predictable course, while the actors are weighed down by a subtext that holds no surprises. What's left is a roundabout description of emotional states - demoralisation, disbelief, anger - which, however powerful, are not sustained by the dramatic movement of the play. You can empathise with the women's distress, but you are sure the real story is in the golf club where their husbands are plotting their next extramarital deception.
· On tour until May 20. Details: 0141-548 1555.
