The Accidental, Ali Smith's much-lauded novel, is about the effect on a middle-class family of the mysterious Amber. Enigmatic, inconsistent and appearing out of nowhere, she is the figure by which the others come to define themselves.
In her debut play, given its premiere by the small Dogstar company, Smith plays with the same idea twice over. First is the arrival of the much travelled Kirsty, whose identity is uncertain, though she is clearly not the person she says she is. Simply showing up in the living room of Iona and Neil is enough to upset their bourgeois equilibrium.
Second is the appearance of Sabrina, a new-age therapist who steps on to stage from the audience. Even Kirsty is freaked by the other-worldly experience of a woman who, like Amber, needs little to provoke a crisis of identity.
If Smith's breaking of the theatrical fourth wall has the feel of an undergraduate prank, she makes her play critic-proof by deconstructing it mid-flow. Neil, says Sabrina, is "sexist and slight" while the structure has "no theatrical merit". And just as you're thinking that Sabrina herself is leaning towards the cliched, she pipes up with, "I'm hardly a caricature of an awful English incomer," which is exactly what she is.
Behind the silliness, however, Smith is trying to say something about the cultural cliches of the new Scotland. She establishes the idea that we "ghosts" in the real world are frightened by traditional music, then relies on the audience to prove the opposite by bursting spontaneously into a round of Wild Mountain Thyme. It's a poignant finale.
This response reflects the good cheer with which Matthew Zajac's production is performed - Sarah Haworth is especially strong as Kirsty - but to sustain the air of iconoclasm, Smith's cliches need more resonance and her script more laughs.
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