Elaine C Smith has made a career playing a Scottish everywoman. Whether it's Rab C Nesbitt's Mary Doll, Shirley Valentine or her own one-woman shows, she has used the vehicle of ordinary, unlettered characters to forge a sisterly bond with her audience. Debbie Isitt's 1992 comedy is another chance for her to play the put-upon housewife, this time one who's been dumped by her husband of 19 years for a younger, slimmer woman, prompting a slow-burning three-year campaign of cruel revenge.
It's hard to imagine that a play characterising men as unreconstructed bores, interested only in sex and food, and women as domestic drudges, catering only to their husbands' every need, could have been written so recently. It's harder still to imagine why it is playing so well 12 years on.
I'm not being elitist about this: there isn't a soap opera on TV that would accept such an unsophisticated vision of male-female relations. That's because no real drama can happen when the odds are so heavily stacked against one character. More frustratingly, despite such a fantastic title, Isitt doesn't even give us the pleasure of seeing the husband cooked.
It might have the political nous of a Punch and Judy show, but The Woman who Cooked her Husband has a seaside sense of humour to match. And when you've got a cast member with the pantomime skills of Andy Gray, who can get a laugh from the most dreary of lines while playing against the idea that his character might be entirely bad, you have a show that's funny, lightweight and innocently entertaining.
· Until April 10. Box office: 0131-529 6000. Then touring.
