Monks

Watching Des Dillon's new play Monks, that Chewin' The Fat catchphrase "we're paying for the banter" kept springing to mind. Audiences certainly aren't getting a well-crafted plot or decent characterisation.

There are a handful of great comic lines in the play, which places three Glaswegians on a mountain in Italy with a monk believed to have healing hands.

Most of the laughs, however, are won by contrasting the remote, spiritual setting with the coarse, thoughtless bellowing of the Scottish characters.

Perhaps in response to criticism from some quarters that Six Black Candles was a substance-free crowd-pleaser, Dillon has here attempted something much more ambitious, combining farce and slapstick with romance, voyages of self-discovery and a very dark storyline involving a catatonic schizophrenic young man. He has bitten off more than he can chew.

You wait ages for a play exploring mental illness, only for three to come along at once. Unfortunately for Monks, the brilliant, thought-provoking Wonderful World of Dissocia and the witty, sensitive Humble Boy got there first, and by contrast putting some 'fucking nutters' on a mountain and hoping for the best really doesn't pass muster.

Robin Laing turns in an admirable performance as the tormented brother Fabian, while the rest of the cast struggle to make anything of under-written roles such as Joe Montana's bereaved boxer and Frances Grey's painfully two-dimensional posh Englishwoman. The latter is required to deliver the thankless line 'We're from different worlds but we've had the same experience' during a heart-to-heart about getting dumped, then to conclude 'I think that's a sign'.

If nothing else, Monks looks gorgeous. Becky Minto's pretty set places some of the action out of sight of audience members in the stalls, but Jeanine Davies's wonderful lighting is so evocative it almost makes the play's daft conversations and clumsy revelations seem meaningful and profound. Not quite, though.