With Golden Jubilee celebrations a month away, Howard Barker's play, set as the monarchy is restored in 1660, bristles with brutal timeliness. A powerless king, a double-dealing government, a world spinning into what feels like a new, viciously cruel order: this is a drama that stabs with its prescience and obscene language, its shocking violence and savage humour. For all that, though, it is also a drama about love and the perhaps redemptive power of tenderness.
Two performances shine out. Bradshaw, widow of Charles I's assassin, is our heroine, the only character in the play able to adapt through fast-changing times, knowing that the alternative is certain death. Beautifully played by Kathryn Howden, Bradshaw's literal journey is to collect dismembered fragments of her executed husband's body and bring them home. This she does, but her wanderings lead her to reject the Puritan ethos of denial and to embrace the tantalising freedoms of acceptance. "Yes is pleasure," she says. "No is pain. I hate no."
In contrast to her gleaming self-knowledge is just about everyone else in the play. Charles II is played by Bob Barrett with sweet, mad glee ("if you listen to me, I'll give you a bit of Surrey") that soon becomes dark; his sexual rampancy counters his political impotence.
Barker's play benefits here from Kenny Ireland's taut direction, balancing menace with tenderness to make the drama's moods intense, especially its bitter comedy. Hayden Griffin's set carves out a bleak, engulfing landscape, with pop-up and largely unadorned interiors - the interest here is in psychological inner recesses not soft furnishings. "This is a new world, missus," one of the Cavaliers tells Bradshaw. Barker's play, almost 20 years old now, takes us back in time to see our world more clearly. A riddle of power, responsibility and love, harshly told and intelligently played at a key moment for the monarchy, Victory is truly a play for today.
· Until May 18. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
