Painter Claude Monet needs no introduction: his water lilies precede him. But how much do we know about the man himself, his sources of inspiration and his personal life? That gap’s redressed by this educational one-man show, featuring acclaimed Fringe actor Stephen Smith.

We meet Monet in old age, his eyesight failing now, as he recalls for us the story of his life and the background to his art. We hear of his impecunious early days, the hard but happy times as he discovered his craft; of his marriages, his influences, the time he spent abroad. We learn, too, what makes a painting impressionist, and even how that term was coined. Along the way we’re shown Monet’s works, and given an informative tour of other paintings we can compare and contrast them to.

So we learn a lot – but we feel rather less. Playwright Joan Greening avoids the trap of hagiography, and duly approaches some darker moments from Monet’s past: an early impulse to take his own life, his return to a shattered Paris after the Franco-Prussian War. And yet, while the stage is set for some meaningful self-reflection, the script never quite follows through. The emotional glimpses we get are fleeting, built largely from bare facts and our own imagination.

That’s not to say the storytelling’s dry. The Monet of the show is impish at times, full of waspish disses for contemporaries who doubted him and witty excuses for his occasional misdeeds. We sense his devotion to his models and muses, and the complexity of his relationship with Alice, the studio assistant who became his second wife. He starts the play by insisting he’s never before “needed” a woman, but it’s clear he’s been deluding himself all along.

The narrative is accompanied by a literal montage of images, projected onto a blank easel beside Monet to illustrate the works and artists he’s referencing. It’s a trick that’s both clever and necessary, and it does enhance our connection with the story – but it comes at a cost. With the audience’s attention often focussed on the screen, and unable to move around the stage for fear of blocking the view, Smith is reduced to a static performance mostly delivered from a single chair.

As a piece of theatre, then, A Montage Of Monet is a touch short on drama and surprisingly subdued in execution. But perhaps it’s best viewed through a different lens: as an illustrated lecture, delivered in character as the painter himself. And in that role it succeeds – because I’ve left not just with a biography of a great man, but an understanding of how and why he came to define a genre.