In a show home on a green field development near Glasgow, guests assemble for a dinner party. Off-stage, one of them, Katie, disappears before reaching the lounge. Her absence, and what it might mean to the ill-matched group gathered in this soulless house, is at the heart of Riccardo Galgani's first full-length play.
Jo, our hostess, is a mother grieving the death of her son, killed by a car on the site's half-finished roads. She is agoraphobic, and clings to the past. Her husband, Bill, a self-made man, runs a storage company, and knows all about hiding things: the nature of his relationship with Katie, and any affection for his wife.
Into their house spill Katie's date Bob - someone she barely knows, who comically becomes the unconcerned deserted boyfriend - plus Viv and Chris, just back from their holidays and ready to party. Within seconds, things turn eye-wateringly sour.
None of this is new dramatic territory, but Galgani has a good line in wry observation, especially on the disjunction between dream and reality. There are some lines to savour, too, especially on the theme of how couples stop communicating with one another. When Bill and Jo argue about holiday destinations, she says that Venice exudes history. "What's Florida got if it doesn't have history?" says Bill. "What do you call the Space Centre?"
Viv and Chris are also a beautifully drawn union of vulgarity and honesty, played with much verve by Molly Innes and Paul Thomas Hickey.
There is, however, a heavy-handedness about the play, a sense of things slipping too quickly into dysfunction and battle rather than edging into crisis. I'm not sure we care what Katie did next; nor does it seem that Jo and Bill could ever have been close.
Like the landscape they live in, bulldozed out of all recognition, it is hard to feel anything for them. We need that to have a sense of loss, which is the play's key theme.
· Until May 18. Box office: 0131-228 1404.
