It's got the necessary flamboyance, sexiness and satirical intent, but something doesn't quite hit home in this first adaptation of the Man Booker prize-winning novel by DBC Pierre. That something is to do with the curious position that Vernon Gregory Little occupies in the book. On one hand, the 15-year-old boy - accused of complicity in a Columbine-style high school massacre - is the source of the novel's rage against the self-interestedness of small-town Texas. On the other, Vernon is an unreliable narrator; we can never be sure of his motives or his methods.
Put that on stage and it's easy to lose one aspect or the other. In Kenny Miller's production, Pete Ashmore's Vernon is slippery and wilful, but short on the kind of righteous adolescent anger that would give the audience a moral point of view.
I think that is why this very funny book doesn't make the explosively hilarious transition to the stage that you would expect. The witty lines whizz past and dazzle brightly, but only intermittently ignite. The other four actors - Julie Austin, Andrew Clark, Lorna McDevitt and Vivien Reid - are pantomime-outrageous as they take on multiple roles from neurotic mother to sexually abusive psychiatrist, but it's surprising how little you laugh out loud at their frolics.
What does come across is the book's bigger joke, which is that at a time of civic mourning, the population is motivated not by grief but by greed. As their backwater town becomes a national story, the sheriff, the television news man and all the hangers-on see their chance for promotion and fame. Without the crosses that line the edges of Miller's set, you could forget that a tragedy had taken place.
Andrea Hart's adaptation makes tough but effective cuts to the novel, cleverly manipulating Pierre's material for maximum dramatic impact. The result is a production that maintains the original's narrative hold and subversive charm, but not all of its spark.
· In repertory until October 9. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
