Arpad Schilling's production for the Hungarian company Kretakor Szinhaz is a search for truth. There are no costumes, no set, no ending as Chekhov wrote it. Instead, the production is played in modern dress in the full glare of the house lights. There is nowhere for the actors to hide except when they take a seat amid the audience; even then, like us, they are in full view.
The space is intimate, some of the exchanges are barely audible, although that hardly matters for a British audience because the simultaneous translation is blaring in your ears. A pity, because it has a distancing effect. The result is a long evening that is sometimes thrilling, but also inconsistent. It is full of wonderful moments when it feels as if these characters are exposing the very warts on their souls. In the early scenes, the production has much in common with the films of Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen's more serious work, only without the benefit of the close-up.
No matter, because the characterisations are so detailed in this movie for the stage. When Trigorin kisses Arkadina he sticks his tongue down her throat; when he kisses Nina he does it with little passion and trips over his briefcase. When Arkadina admits she has never read a word of her son's work she does it shamelessly. Konstantin's play is performed like radical performance art, ending only in his mother's fury as she is enveloped in smoke.
Like Konstantin, Schilling is attempting to find a new form, a new way to play Chekhov's naturalism. It is an attempt at distillation. But to succeed, the performances have to be astounding throughout - and they are not, particularly in the final encounter between Nina and Konstantin. Undoubtedly interesting; undoubtedly flawed.
· Until August 22. Box office: 0131-473 2000
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