A Drunk Woman Looks at The Thistle

Karen Dunbar brings a passion and a strong sense of conviction to her performance of Denise Mina's adaptation and re-imagining of Hugh MacDiarmid's epic poem. This is not any old thistle, of course, but the thistle, Scottish identity - and the thorny question of what that means.

Dunbar comes to it, or so it seems, from as many angles as she has created characters in her career as a stand-up comic. Not that this is comedy, but that it uses bawdy, full stretch, iconic humour, just as Dunbar's characters are all the stronger for being based on recognisable Scottish archetypes.

So she is convincing as she stumbles up on to the stage and begins to regale the audience with a seemingly random mix of booze and sex. But as Mina's script begins to get down to the serious business at hand, teasing out the national stereotypes and questioning whether they are actually useful or just debilitating, so Dunbar grows in stature and power.

Importantly, as the deeply philosophical questions are knocked back and forth, Dunbar ensures that they come over as banter of a kind that is entertaining on its own account, not just for the more subtle depths of what it is saying.