This has the unmistakable aura of an event. Three sold-out performances. Two visiting stars in Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. And a meditation on the events of September 11. But, although it is not without merit and is excellently performed, Anne Nelson's script is self- congratulatory and politically incurious.
The intention is admirable: to acknowledge the selfless professionalism of the New York firemen who sacrificed their lives in attempting to rescue the victims of the World Trade Centre attacks. To that end Sarandon plays a journalist - clearly Nelson herself - who assists Robbins's Fire Captain in composing funeral eulogies to his fallen comrades. As Robbins talks, you get a sense both of the pride the firemen took in their work and of the texture of lives - of the fire-house's resident food critic, of the Irishman who went on weekend church picnics and of the Germanic welder who had trouble with girls.
But the format, by which the Fire Captain's heartfelt words are translated into eulogistic prose, smacks of journalistic vanity. More seriously, Nelson scarcely looks at the broader picture. It is one thing for the grief-numbed captain to say that there was "no reason" for the tragedy. But for the journalist to endorse this is politically naive - it denies the long chain of cause and effect that led to the disaster. At one stage she also bats aside other nations' exploitation of the event by saying, "It's about us." But to view September 11 as a purely New York tragedy isolated from world affairs is, to put it mildly, myopic.
I would not deny that Robbins endows the Fire Captain with a stumbling integrity or that Sarandon plays the journalist with intelligence. But, although the event may be cathartic for many, I still yearn for a real dramatist to view the firemen's astounding heroism in a wider political context.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
