Pat and Jean are nightshift nurses in a mental hospital. They while away the long nights talking. Or at least Pat talks - about her bowel movements, her grandchildren, her stupendously dull life - while Jean listens and occasionally interjects with a caustic comment to which Pat is oblivious.
Written by Lynn Ferguson and Jo Brand, who is indeed a former psychiatric nurse, Mental is not a new piece, but is packing the crowds in because Brand is starring, in her first acting role, as Jean. Acting however is putting it rather too strongly. Brand doesn't act, she just is.
Initially she just doesn't seem to be trying at all. After a while you get used to her mumbling, throwaway style, and start to wonder whether she might be modelling herself on Marlon Brando, in more ways than one.
Ultimately Brand's inability to be anyone other than herself on stage makes an already weak play far worse, and you just sit there waiting for the next joke, wishing that you were in Brand's solo show instead.
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
