There are only seven classic stories for writers to work with. Given that Brian Friel's 1977 play Living Quarters arrived onstage the same weekend as the Citizens' Theatre revisited Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, the classical comparisons between the two plays were obvious.

There are only seven classic stories for writers to work with. Given that Brian Friel's 1977 play Living Quarters arrived onstage the same weekend as the Citizens' Theatre revisited Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, the classical comparisons between the two plays were obvious.

Where O'Neill's patriarch returning to the familial bosom with a young wife is a New England entrepreneur, Friel's is United Nations soldier Frank, back from the Middle East after saving nine of his men's lives. With Frank's wife, Anne, having embarked on an affair with his son Ben, and his three daughters all but confined to domestic barracks, his heroics on a global scale are now less important than the peace-keeping mission needed on the home front.

Friel writes about families with a Chekhovian beauty, something director John Dove teases out of his cast with a delicately realised set of tensions between the sisters. But what is most fascinating about the work - surprisingly receiving its UK premiere - is its structure. Friel transplants into the action a figure simply called Sir, who becomes the play's narrator, director, chorus and ultimately its conscience.

It is a device which, as with the story, consciously looks back to the Greeks, but here resembles something somewhere between Arthur Miller and Pirandello. Played with pukka relish by Stuart McGugan, Sir interacts with his characters, who gather to recreate their downfall as if to observe their own mistakes.

No matter how much Ron Donachie's Frank may protest, though, it's impossible to prevent the tragedy which follows. And while Dove accentuates the play's elegance, he also taps into the serious fun to be had from the central artifice of a quietly radical take on human folly.