Touch, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

A young woman jumps into the Thames and is rescued by a stranger. She was trying to end it all – or was she?

Touch is a promising first play by Bill Dare, better known as a producer on Spitting Image and Dead Ringers. Here, the comedy is tinged with mystery and even poignancy. Having dried off in Vernon's well-ordered flat, Emma is soon penetrating every well-concealed corner of his life. She clings to him, breezy and infuriatingly PC, earnestly (desperately?) trying to bond. Her half-engaging, half-maddening intrusion clearly isn't welcome.

Like the people whose mundane, lonely lives Vernon glimpses through his telescope (loftily described by him as an "image shift focuser"), he is shown to have an empty, meaningless existence. And he likes it that way, or so he thinks. Crusty by habit rather than nature, you feel, Vernon begins to regret having behaved so heroically. It wasn't even in character – as is clear when he accidentally reveals that he knows more about Emma than he's letting on.

Rupert Holliday Evans gives Vernon a blank expression and jerky gestures to proclaim his shy, self-centred way of life. Lucinda Millward captures the casual confidence that conceals Emma's insecurity and pain. Even when the plot and characterisation feel a little one-dimensional, the play's emotional texture is palpable.

To 27 August, not today or 15 (0131-228 1404)

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