Any story could be told in myriad ways. That's the thinking behind Shiver, a new play by Oliver Emanuel for Silver Tongue Theatre.
It starts with flight steward Christine returning home after a trip; just as she's let her hair down, there's a knock at the door. Only her visitor isn't the pilot she's expecting, but an old friend, Jacob, whom she hasn't seen for 17 years. In fact, the last time she saw him, she thought he was dead.
This opening scene replays four times, each time suggesting something slightly different: shock, anger, wariness; love, curiosity, hate. It's a tactic Emanuel repeats throughout the play, each time more successfully, until the truth of the relationship between these two, and of the events of that night 17 years before, become almost impossible to fathom.
And yet, there is something unsatisfying in the writing, and particularly in Daniel Bye's production, that prevents you becoming fully mesmerised by this strange, slippery tale. There's too much banal, straightforward text between the variations, dragging out the suspense and numbing you with verbiage.
And the performances, by Kay Bridgeman and Grae Cleugh, sometimes fall short of the demands of the more scintillating passages, so that there's not always enough modulation of tone and action. As a result, Shiver feels like an intriguing experiment, but very far from an unqualified success.
· Until August 28. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
