It is certainly a hell-raising performance. Richard Dormer unleashes a whirlwind of invention - and will blow you away with his portrayal of Alex Higgins, the Northern Irish snooker hero who twice won the world championships, and who might have been one of the green baize table's all-time greats if he had only kept his temper and taste for booze and women under better control.
But this is all about the performance and not a great deal about the content, as Dormer whizzes through Higgins's life from golden-fingered nine-year-old to rasping, throat-cancer-stricken loser. Quite frankly, Higgins comes across as a bit of a whiner, a man prepared to blame everyone but himself for his slide from champion to a bloke down to his last tenner.
It is interesting that so often we seem to prefer our sporting heroes to be those who throw away their talent. There is nothing quite like failure to spawn a myth - and people queuing up to turn your story into a one-man show. But there is too much biography here and too little psychological insight, apart from a general suggestion that Higgins's war on authority was rather less vicious than the war he raged on his own mind and body. Higgins may be a loser, but Dormer's performance is an outright winner, and a crowd-pleaser.
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
