Steven Berkoff's staged poem addressing the attack on the World Trade Centre would be gripping viewing if you'd been holidaying on the moon since September 10 2001. Berkoff retells the 9/11 story in the style of an epic narrative. But, with the attack and its consequences still the stuff of news and chat, Requiem for Ground Zero rarely tells us anything we haven't heard many times before.
It's all done in Berkoff's trademark grandiose style. He recasts the terrorist strike as a procession of sometimes resonant images - a window cleaner "wipes the eyes" of the World Trade Centre, the better to see its impending doom. But the demands of the epic narrative lead Berkoff to simplify the incident, to present it as an emotional, not a political, drama. His poem adds to rather than undercuts the culture of sentimentality surrounding 9/11 and the myth of its uniqueness.
Furthermore, the poem's aspiration to historical grandeur is undermined by parochial sideswipes at Bush and, particularly, Blair. Berkoff impersonates the pair with entertaining savagery; elsewhere he flits in and out of accents, grimaces and portentous, pop-eyed stares. The monologue's dramatic force is often diminished by Berkoff's theatrics. Words are swilled around his mouth like expensive wines - and too often spat out only after they've lost their taste.
There's no doubt Berkoff's on to something - this work-in-progress performance does enough to prove (as if we didn't know) that 9/11 is the stuff of grand drama. His problem is that he's telling a story that we never stop hearing. If his perspective is to distinguish itself from so many others, it needs to be fresher and more insightful.
· Until August 26. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
