Gus, an amnesiac, lies in a Vancouver hospital trying to remember who he is. For him, memory is like a mirror. He looks into it and sees only himself looking. Napoleon wanders around so certain of himself, even in defeat and despite the fact that he is clearly a she. The doctor tries to write a love poem; the nurse listens.
Chris Goode has an almost unrivalled record of success on the fringe, but doesn't quite pull off this ambitious mediation on memory, identity and self. None the less, it is a pretty beautiful failure. There are moments of such intense lyricism, it is like having melting snow dripping down your spine, and the ideas it throws up about where we locate our true sense of self are undeniably interesting. But while form and subject occasionally meld, particularly in balancing the id and the ego, too often the piece seems off kilter. The script is often very funny, but words, like memory, fail. The characters of the Doctor and Nurse are fatally underdeveloped. At the end, you feel as if you have had a dream you can't remember: something interesting but maddeningly elusive.
· Until Sunday. Box office: 0131-228 1404.
