It is the juxtaposition of images that makes this contemporary version of the Arabian fairy tales One Thousand and One Nights so startling. Just as Scheherazade told tales to save her neck, so the refugees who tell these stories of life and death from the Muslim world are doing so as a means of survival too. Only they are all workers in a Christmas decorations factory. In Alan Lyddiard's production, the repetitive business of work - the very ordinariness of the everyday - masks unfathomable pain. Fat little plastic Father Christmases wink merrily in the light as dark stories of violence, love, murder and despair unfold: a man tapes up his eyes and mouth, four men are confined in tiny cages like failed Houdinis, and a father - about to go out into a crowded stadium with explosives wrapped around his body - records a message for his little daughter. This is not your average evening's entertainment.
The cumulative power is considerable, but the evening takes a long time to get going, and it is only after the interval that the production begins to reveal shape, momentum and emotional punch. In part it is because, although Lyddiard's production at its best suggest the real texture of everyday lives, at its worst - when the actors pose and posture and slide tables around - it has the polished emptiness of a pop video. The fragmentary nature of the stories also works against the piece as a whole, particularly in the first half when too often it feels as if you are at a lecture rather than being told stories. The actors improve immeasurably when they are eventually allowed to get their teeth into the narrative.
What's also missing is any sense that stories have a function beyond aiding survival. In One Thousand and One Nights, Sheherazade saves not just herself but also her husband through the healing power of narrative. Here the stories act more like messages in a bottle, cries for help and understanding from people wrecked and stranded on the sand-banks between East and West.
· Until October 15. Box office: 0115-941 9419.
