Like his better known work, Of Mice and Men, Burning Bright was written in novella and play form by John Steinbeck. First performed on Broadway in 1950, it has only rarely been seen since, sometimes as an opera, a form which would suit its heightened drama and symbolism well.
V.amp, a new theatre company led by the actress Alison Peebles, takes this drama as its first show. It isn't a subtle play: four archetypal characters spin into heavily plotted misery. A woman, Mordeen, takes a lover to get pregnant knowing her husband, Joe Saul, to be sterile but desperate to continue his family line. The lover she chooses, Victor, is known as a philanderer. When she falls pregnant, Victor is transformed and in love; Joe Saul gets a medical and realises the child cannot be his. Only his friend, Ed, can resolve matters.
It is not a great play. Joe Saul and Victor, as diametrically opposed versions of manhood, never seem real. The writing is not satisfying and does not suspend disbelief; when Joe Saul nips off to the doctor for a routine check-up and comes back knowing he is infertile, you do wonder how.
What lifts the play is Gabriel Quigley's performance as Mordeen, its most convincing character: the woman who loves her husband so much she betrays him and we will forgive her. She had an abortion five years ago, and so has her own quest to bring a new life into the world, as well as trying to keep her marriage.
V.amp also go to town on the staging of the play, creating a thrilling visual spectacle. Steinbeck sets the three acts in a circus, a dusty old farm and then on board a ship. The latter is superbly realised, with two unwelcoming decks cranked into place during the interval, and in each setting there is some impressive attention to detail. When we are backstage at the circus, the crowd noise is so convincingly done you think there really is another audience outside; same with the farm setting, and the cries of wild animals.
Throughout, the circus theme is kept alive, with trapeze artists slithering in and out of the action, mirroring emotions and amplifying the symbolism. They represent the life almost bludgeoned out of these unlucky characters, and the small moves they make to claw something back.
• Until March 24. Box office: 0141-287 3900.
