Peter Arnott's new play, an ambitious attempt to put Edinburgh in the psychiatrist's chair, brings down the curtain on the 10-year reign of artistic director Kenny Ireland with a confident swagger. Arnott takes his cue from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a novel about the dark impulses lurking behind genteel appearances, which is easily read as a veiled portrait of the Scottish capital. Although nominally set in London, the novel has the taste of Robert Louis Stevenson's native city, which embodied the contradictions of the Victorian era.
The Breathing House is about an outwardly respectable society choosing to ignore its own indiscretions, while real and metaphorical disease gnaws away from the inside. In one corner, the cynical Gilbert sets up his mistress in a brothel; in another the naive Cloon falls in love with a maid who has secrets of her own. By the time the truth comes out, the city is seething with cholera and syphilis, and someone is torching the Old Town.
That Ireland plays the melodrama straight rather than camping it up or loading it with irony gives the production a driving momentum, although it leaves some scenes exposed. Similarly, Arnott drifts close to cliche but rescues himself with Brechtian dialectics: honesty versus hypocrisy, desire versus decorum, Darwinism versus creationism and (though he doesn't say it) Jekyll versus Hyde.
Ireland has assembled a testimonial team of formidable talent. Only the most junior members of the 12-strong cast have not taken starring roles on this stage in the past decade. By putting the likes of Neil McKinven and Kathryn Howden on a technically demanding set designed by visual artist Calum Colvin, the director leaves the theatre with a flourish that epitomises the best aspects of his tenure.
· Until May 17. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
