If you were a prince out walking in the forest on the eve of your marriage to the fair Patricia, and an old, warty crone demanded that you hand over the flowers you have picked for your beloved fiancee, you would comply, wouldn't you? Particularly if she said menacingly: "Those flowers you must offer me/ Or you will live in misery."
Not the prince in David Mamet's original version of the old tale. This prince replies: "You are pushing your luck, babe." Well, you can imagine what happens. Before you can say great, big, green frog costume, the prince has been turned into an amphibian and can only be saved by a kiss willingly given by a milkmaid.
Mamet certainly introduces a modern note into his fairy tale, setting it in a country which after the mysterious disappearance of the prince becomes a police state under the rule of the prince's cousin and the fair Patricia, who turns out to be fair of face but foul of heart.
It would be impossible to dislike this show, which is produced with a straightforward, low-key charm, but you wonder for whom Mamet intended it. It is rather oddly pitched between fairy tale and parable, and is too sophisticated in its humour for the very young but too childish for the more mature.
Until August 26. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
