Beautiful Burnout

If you've been paying attention to UK theatre in recent years, you'll know exactly what to expect from this show.

The subject is boxing, the music electronic, the choreography by Frantic Assembly's Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett. The space in Edinburgh University's Centre for Sports and Exercise contains an expensive boxing-ring set that incorporates a wall of TV screens.

Beautiful Burnout does exactly what it says on the tin. The physical sequences are impressive, the pumping Underworld soundtrack perfectly complementary and the performances committed. These parts are all very strong, but is the show greater than their sum? Not really.

Bryony Lavery's play charts the boxing career of Cameron Burns – a brief, optimistic flicker – from his first training session with firm-but-fair father figure Bobby Burgess until his professional debut. Along the way are destiny-changing decisions; on the sidelines, watching with unease, is Cameron's resigned mother.

Certainly, there are many beautiful sequences, meaning the contrast is all the more striking when the ugly reality of the sport creeps in, but the linear plot holds few surprises and the overall experience is pleasant and pretty – everything real-life boxing is not. The cast, led by the ubiquitous Ryan Fletcher as Cameron, have clearly trained hard, but the dangerous tension of actual fighting is necessarily absent.

In its place could have been more development of these characters, and more insight into why they might be chasing this very specific kind of high-stakes fame and glory. There are scattered hints about broken homes and troubled pasts, but few solid clues to what what first led them to push open the doors of this gym and change their lives forever.