If you could have one type of weather every day, what would it be? That is the question posed by this gently comic morality play, written in the 16th century by John Heywood and presented in a boisterous Scots adaptation by Eddie Stiven. On a rainy day in Edinburgh, you would think the answer were obvious, but not everyone, it seems, wants to live in permanent sunshine.
The play has a very simple structure: Jupiter, tired of hearing complaints about the weather, employs a mischievous man called Merry Courant to gather opinion on how it could be improved. One by one, stock types approach with their ideas: a merchant asks for strong winds for his ships, a water miller needs rain, a laundry woman wants hot sun to dry her clothes. The tone becomes wonderfully irreverent when a beautiful lady flirtatiously requests clement conditions so that she can swan about town looking pretty, and a boy demands wintry chill for snowball fights. The moral is simple, too: one weather can never please all.
It is as well that the ideas are basic because much of the play is incomprehensible unless your Scots is in good working order. But Stiven's adaptation has such energy and humour (the song cheerfully listing the 40 different Scots words for rain is particularly winning) that listening to it is intoxicating. And Nutshell theatre company's production is so exuberant, and so clever in its use of folk music, fizzy movement and rough design, that it is just as exhilarating to watch.
· Until Sunday. Box office: 0870 745 3083.
