A nigh on irresistible prospect, this. The Scottish premiere of David Greig's magnificent play about language, space and love also marks the re-opening of the Tron Theatre after a £5m redevelopment and artistic director Irina Brown's swansong production at the venue. And then there's the title - The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union. If only there were prizes for such things.
All of this froth, though, falls away in the compelling first half of this production. The complexities of the narrative are given all the cool, sparse space they need to unfold: two astronauts forgotten and lost in space; a crumbling marriage; the affair between the husband and a young Russian table-dancer, whose father is one of the astronauts; a speech therapist (the wife from the marriage, superbly played by Alison Peebles) and her confused patient.
In each of these overlapping dramas Greig's familiar concern with the failure of communication is central. The astronauts talk though no one can hear, the childless married couple have nothing left to say, the patient has memories but no words. Even Nastassja, the spirited young Russian woman, by far the most expressive character, has one empty word for everything: "fuckshitty".
Every exchange is between two characters and no more, and the failure of dialogue is neatly opposed time and again to noise, brimful of meaning. Keith, the married man, plays a tape of Nastassja's breathing to a stranger who then determines to make her his; the white noise of television interference symbolises the end of love; the rip of Velcro on a space-suit underlines the drama of what is about to happen. Compared with these sounds, language is stasis, an endgame like the seesaw which is always on stage.
The second half breaks up the dialogues (Keith disappears, as does one of the astronauts, and the affair is transformed into an unsatisfying love triangle); the set is trashed and disorderly. This suits the bleaker mood, but underlines the lack of pace that slightly mars this second hour of bigger themes. Men's desire to possess (space, women, money) and women's resistance to being possessed are explored, but without the all-enveloping urgency of the first half. Instead of desperately convincing relationships trapped into empty words, we get fragments of characters, splinters of language.
"Is this Harmony?" a voice bleats out incessantly, searching for the lost space mission. A resounding, terrifying "No" is the answer from this play, which reveals, to devastating effect, the way that language can make and break us all.
Until November 6. Box office: 0141- 552 4267
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