Does the observer always destroy the experiment and, without appearing to do so, influence the event? If so, what of the war photographer who stands by, finger on shutter, as a man points a gun at another man's head or a child runs down the street, catastrophe snapping at her heels?
Michael is one such war photographer, a man who no longer just snaps the news but is famous enough to make it. This is a man who can compose an award-winning photo, but whose way of life has led to a loss of any sense of responsibility.
We are all Michaels, taking in the images over the breakfast table and then turning the page. But Michael is so used to watching dispassionately until the moment he can get the best shot, that when his daughter falls in a lake and is about to drown, he fails to leap in and save her.
Despite wildly uneven casting, Chris Thorpe's play is watchable. But it is somewhat earnest and adolescent, as if indignant to discover that war photographers don't fulfil quite the same function as Red Cross workers and UN peacekeepers. It also plays to the obvious, particularly in its portrait of the world-weary journalist, a characterisation that has become as tiresome a cliche as the flawed cop.
· Until August 26. Box office: 0131-228 1404.
