What is the difference between personal testimony and art? The question arises when watching this performance by students and staff of New York's Playwrights Horizons Theater School, which weaves together the participants' experiences of September 11 and its aftermath. What makes the show different from the stories still to be found in the US papers each day that detail the personal tragedies of September 11 and provide a collective healing process? Therapy has its place, but I am not sure that place is the theatre. Particularly when the show is as ragged as this one.
The play is undoubtedly heartfelt. It has its moments of insight, and occasionally succeeds in juxtaposing the banal and the bizarre. There is a nice moment when a group of students escaping the blast trudge down Fifth Avenue and sing to raise their spirits. Only the looks of others make them realise the inappropriateness of their choice: It's Raining Men.
But all this show does is give its participants their moment of fame and validate their experience. That is fine, but why should they expect that other people will want to watch?
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
