They couldn't have timed it better: opening the same weekend as the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow's Desire Under the Elms, Brian Friel's Living Quarters takes the same Phaedra myth and sets it in County Donegal. In the former, Eugene O'Neill depicts the arrival of a bride at her older husband's farmhouse, where she seduces his youngest son. But Friel's play describes a returning war hero's celebrations ruined by his discovery of his young wife's similar infidelity while he was rescuing his comrades from a Middle Eastern siege.
For Friel, who was a good 10 years older in 1977 when Living Quarters premiered than O'Neill in 1924, the son and the unfaithful bride are relatively minor characters. For him, the play is the tragedy of the good soldier brought low by his selfish pursuit of glory.
With Friel's characteristic love of language, the play recalls less the austerity of Racine's Phèdre than the fulsome domestic life of an Arthur Miller. Intriguingly, it also evokes Six Characters in Search of an Author by turning the chorus into an ironic authorial figure with the power to stop the action and debate the progress with the protagonists, though the device's postmodern coolness undermines the force of the tragedy.
Perhaps this is the reason it's taken 30 years for the play's UK premiere. If so, it's a shame because, as John Dove's immaculately acted production shows, Living Quarters is a rich, humane drama and a more-than-worthy companion piece to its illustrious predecessors.
· Until November 17. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
· This article was amended on Monday November 5 2007 after an incorrect phone number was given for the Lyceum. This has now been corrected
