Adapting a novel for the stage can be a tricky business, which plots to omit, which to make the central aspect, how to turn a character's thoughts into onstage dialogue. The decisions are endless. Christopher Deans has taken up the challenge in adapting Christopher Brookmyre's novel Boiling a Frog .

Set in post devolution Scotland Jack Palabane (Gary McInnes), a muck raking journalist, is arrested and imprisoned for breaking and entering whilst trying to expose the Catholic churches political hold over policy at the Scottish Parliament. Set against him is the sinister Ian Beadie (Stewart Porter), PR to the Catholic Church, a man not afraid to fudge figures and facts in order to make his clients look powerful and righteous. What follows is a tale of political intrigue, power struggles, blackmail and murder.

Despite the best efforts of the cast this production is let down by Deans' script, full of almost laughably clichéd dialogue and lacking in subtext or characterization, there is little for the cast to get there teeth into. Instead we see motivation-less murders, and many subplots which seem to be glossed over which could have been interesting had they been allowed to develop, including sexual abuse in the church. Lorenzo Mele's direction keeps things moving through numerous set changes and rapid small scenes before culminating in good triumphing over evil, as is always the case in the standard thriller.

One wonders why 7:84 chose to adapt this novel for the stage, the company was set up to bring politically engaging and entertaining theatre to Scotland, informing the population about political matters whilst having in founding member John McGrath's words A good night out. Boiling a Frog doesn't tick any of these boxes, being nothing more than a standard political thriller that could have been performed by any number of companies, but shouldn't really have been produced by Scotland 's premiere political theatre company.