Biography theatre is the bane of the fringe. It should be banned, along with all those desperate actors and actors with a show to put on and no imagination, who rifle through the lives of the famous and infamous in the name of entertainment. An exception should be made, however, for Mark Jenkins's play about Orson Welles, with the leading part performed deftly by Christian McKay. It offers some of the facts of Welles' life, but is as much a meditation on the mysteries of prodigy and creativity, success and failure as it is a mere smash-and-grab raid on a biography.
Welles was awesome, but by his late 20s his best work - The War of the Worlds, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons - was already behind him. A lifetime of voiceovers for frozen peas lay ahead. How does the crown prince cope when he realises he has turned into the clown? Can you define the moment when Prince Hal morphs into Falstaff? Jenkins's intelligent script is not all smoke and mirrors. It has a pleasing density and there is a sharpness in the writing that matches the wit of its subject.
But then I would say that: when Welles staged an all black voodoo Macbeth in Harlem only one critic was less than ecstatic. The cast put a curse on him, and two days later he was dead.
· Until August 30. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
