The challenges of childhood and adolescence are something of a specialised subject for Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell. This was his terrain in Our Bad Magnet, his first full-length play, and also in his best-known work, Decky Does a Bronco. Now, in this new 90-minute show for Vanishing Point, Maxwell scrutinises the final phase of adolescence through the eyes of Paul, a sensitive 16-year-old with a passion for the animal world. That world becomes the rich imaginative backdrop - and powerful metaphor - for his bewildering transition into adulthood.
As the environment he knows transforms into something dark and mystifying, the intensity felt by Paul - impressively played by newcomer Paul J Corrigan - is mirrored by the production's inventive fluidity. Central to this are the superb performances by Claire Lamont and Sandy Grierson, who between them play all the characters in Paul's world. This includes the talking dog next door: Grierson, hilariously, has him deliver his lines like the grandest Shakespearean actor ("Rather embarrassingly, I chew the furniture").
Maxwell's strongest writing is the observational material about suffocating family life, and his tender evocation of how new every feeling is for the confused mid-teen. There are many beautifully observed lines as Paul tests the boundaries between youth and adulthood, and the human and animal worlds. Yet the play falters slightly as Paul descends into violence and aggression, and we subsequently lose him as our guide to his fast-changing universe. When he is no longer able to interpret what is happening, this otherwise taut drama rather loses its focus. It is then that you feel the familiarity of the man-becomes-beast subject matter most keenly - not least in the fairy-tale world that Kai Fischer's set suggests - rather than the welcome freshness of its first hour.
· Until June 18. Box office: 0870 429 6883.
