Braham Murray's production starts with a blast of bagpipes. It's not a sound one wishes to be exposed to often, yet it makes the perfect introduction to JM Barrie's play about a Scottish windbag with a tendency to drone on at length.
John Shand is a Highland MP hopelessly wet behind the ears but widely regarded by his party as the coming man. The secret of Shand's success - though he is far too self-congratulating to acknowledge it - is that his canny wife, Maggie, figuratively wears the trousers and literally writes his speeches. Indeed, the boy wonder would be nothing without the perceptive common touch and sprightly turn of phrase of his formidable domestic spin doctor.
It would be easy to hail What Every Woman Knows as an empowering piece of Edwardian feminism, yet it actually confirms that Barrie was more a product of his age than a polemicist set against it. Maggie's self-abasement, and her insistence on her plainness of features, is more aggrandising than admirable. And the dreamy naivety of Barrie's writing is never far from the surface: it's too easy to imagine the scenario as Peter Pan grown-up and taking his place in Parliament, with clever Wendy advising him.
The production has a pleasing lightness of touch, however, and features a cluster of handsomely defined performances. Mark Arends' Shand is a picture of petulant self-delusion, while Gabrielle Drake drifts through serenely as an enervated French countess.
Jenny Ogilvie works hard to suggest that Maggie's deep reserve of common sense is adequate compensation for dwindling self-esteem. Yet however radical the drama sounds, the message Barrie seems to convey is that what every woman ought to know is her place.
· Until February 25. Box office: 0161-833 9833
