We're in the 1920s and things are getting out of hand in Monsieur Orgon's Charles Rennie Mackintosh-style home. The gullible master of the house, played by an ebullient Steven McNicoll in silly plus-fours and sillier moustache, has been taken in by Tartuffe, the religious hypocrite and conman played by a sinister Kenneth Bryans, who takes the grimmest of pleasure in his deception. The family aren't happy.
In an effort to make him see sense, his brother Cléante launches into a speech of oratorical proportions. In Liz Lochhead's celebrated version of the Molière comedy, it's a marathon 43 lines of rhyming couplets in broad Scots. Beyond persuasion, McNicoll tosses and turns and eventually nods off at his table. "Are you feenished, brother?" he says, stirring from slumber. "Do go on!"
It's a funny moment, but it would be much more so if you weren't feeling equally pummelled by the production so far. Lochhead's translation is dense and demanding, but also smart and witty and it ought to skip along. Here, a talented cast under Tony Cownie's direction make it seem leaden and laboured.
First seen 20 years ago at the Lyceum, and revived now for the company's 40th anniversary season, the translation is, by the playwright's own description, an anachronistic collage of the "proverbial, slangy, couthy, clichéd, catch-phrasey and vulgar".
But instead of letting the language sing, the actors bark it into submission, forcing Molière's plot to carry nearly all the comedic weight. This it duly does and the production eventually kicks into life as Orgon witnesses Tartuffe trying to seduce his wife - a sassy Jennifer Black - but the laughter is a long time coming.
Consequently, the play's darker message about the politics of religious power - here exemplified by Bryans appearing dressed as an Orangeman - feels gratuitous and the result is muted instead of joyous.
· Until February 11. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
