Stand-up comics and straight theatre don’t always mix well - see the latest scathing reviews of Marcus Bridgestock’s School for Scandal. However, if the casting is right and the drama tightly spun, the results can be exceptional. Gregory Burke’s Gagarin Way, which first played in 2001, is an ideal showpiece for Phil Nichol and his comic pals, fusing dark humour and palpable violence into a spikey, intense and uncomfortably funny show.

The play takes place in a factory warehouse in Fife, where petty criminal Eddie (Phil Nichol) has convinced green and gormless security guard Tom (a surprisingly gentle and emotional Will Andrews) to help him with a dubious jaunt. Tom thinks he’s just helping to steal computer chips, but when Eddie’s partner Gary (Jim Muir) turns up with a bound and gagged body, the game is raised and the clock starts ticking.

Burke generates countless quips and easy laughs from the sheer incompetence of this improvised and inept heist. First up, it turns out they’ve kidnapped the wrong man – they wanted to kill a ‘Jap’ executive in order to prove a point about multinational corporations and their dominance over the hard-grafting Scottish workers, but the gagged hostage turns out to be Scottish. And his name is Frank. What point are they going to prove now?

With no real agenda underpinning their mission, there is little left to do except bicker and fight. It is thug Eddie, played with verve and volatility by Phil Nichol, who dictates the tone, and as his impatience escalates, the threat of violence sinks in and spreads. In fact is Eddie’s gun that dictates the tone - when it is hidden, we laugh easily at Burke’s razor sharp quips, but when the gun is brandished, the comedy collapses and the auditorium tingles with fear.

Phil Nichol and Jim Muir are convincing and powerful, but it is Will Andrews’ unwitting student Tom that adds shades of grey to this black comedy. Andrews can really act and his unconscious yelps of his fear, his wide and frightened eyes, lend the show real bite. This is a show that tugs on surprising sympathies – the downtrodden workers don’t come off well here – and it is testimony to Burke’s skill that, alongside fusing two conflicting genres, he has also managed to turn this play on his head, transforming the kidnappers into victims of their own frustrated inadequacies.

13.00, till Sunday 30 August 2009