Received wisdom tells us that Look Back in Anger defined the mood of a generation in 1956. Hindsight suggests it was Waiting for Godot, first seen in English a year earlier, that was the truly radical drama of that decade.
Both Osborne and Beckett were concerned with people who, in Jimmy Porter's words, "want to escape from the pain of being alive". But where Beckett's play has an abstract quality that allows it to talk to all generations, Look Back in Anger has trouble struggling free of the specifics of its era.
Consider the moment when Porter's wife, Alison, admits to sharing his feeling of never having been young. Presumably this struck a chord in 1956, only 11 years after the war: in 2005, in spite of the poignancy of Richard Baron's staging, it is just not a sentiment I recognise.
But if it is difficult for us to figure out why Porter is behaving in such an extraordinary manner, there is no doubt that extraordinary is what it is.
Played with customary zest by David Tennant, Porter is a compellingly detestable character delivering speeches of virtuoso rage, vicious humour and dazzling invective. His rants are made even more remarkable by the indifference of his companions, an icy, elegant Kelly Reilly as Alison showing Teflon resistance to her husband's provocations and a superbly understated Steven McNicoll as flatmate Cliff, dutifully occupying the no-man's-land in this bed-sit warzone.
Tennant perches on the furniture, juts out his lower jaw, lobs around teapots, newspapers and food, gleefully exposing Porter's misogyny and insensitivity, even as he turns on the charm to show the charismatic lover or the vulnerable child beneath. It's a tremendous performance, given touching and credible support from the rest of the cast and finally revealing, behind the strangeness and vitriol, a sweetly conventional love story.
· Until February 12. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
