Now here's a puzzle and a disappointment. I'd been looking forward to Peter Reder's performance, which may be the problem, because it's not a performance. It's exactly what it says it is, a guided tour, though some of the guided tours available on the Royal Mile have more of a theatrical flourish. Perhaps they should be in the Traverse programme, too.
Reder offers a little information about the building's past and particularly its benefactor, the Victorian brewer William McEwan, before showing us some objects and speculating about history and nostalgia. Then there's a short film featuring an old lady with angel's wings.
Reder's theme is the distressing of the past; the cosmetic touches it is given to conform with our idea - infuenced by TV costume dramas - of how the past should be. In the process he skates across suburbia, immigration and colonialism. But the ideas are not so original that they fascinate and his musings are not sufficiently specific to the environment to give the experience the extra thrust it needs. You'd be better off meeting him down the pub for an exchange of ideas over a pint.
· Until August 28. Box office: 0131-228 1404
