Tom Fool

Franz Xaver Kroetz's family drama Tom Fool is a curious little play.

Set in 1970s Germany, it comprises twenty or so scenes of varying length, and is split by an interval three-quarters of the way through. There's not a lot of action ' save for two short, shocking bursts of aggression - but there's a great deal of absurdly banal chatter.

There's running commentary of a royal wedding on TV, a painstaking attempt to account for a small discrepancy in a restaurant bill, plus vacuuming and tidying up.

It might not sound too appealing, but in fact this Citizens' production is never less than enthralling. There's a voyeuristic thrill in watching the family fragmenting, not unlike tuning into a Big Brother highlights show secure in the knowledge that an evening of bland chit-chat will culminate in a brawl.

Liam Brennan and Meg Fraser play Otto and Martha, a couple struggling to reconcile their ambitions for their apathetic son Ludwig (Richard Madden) with their desire for him to earn his keep, if not move out of the living room of their tiny flat.

Sole breadwinner Otto works as a 'human screwdriver' in a BMW factory, but with the threat of redundancy ever-present and money worries already never far from his mind, he suffers a malfunction that shakes the family out of their established roles.

Graham Sutherland's music (and musak) is hypnotically appropriate, and excellent performances by all three actors ensure that every line of dialogue counts. Kroetz's scripts, here translated by Estella Schmid and Anthony Vivis, is fully of wonderfully nuanced little exchanges that subtly probe issues of class, pride and gender in an time of uncertainty.

The only hitch is that after the interval, Tom Fool doesn't really have anywhere much to go. When the ending suddenly arrives, it feels like being shaken awake from a particularly vivid dream.