The spirit of vaudeville and the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy hover over this two-hander from Philadelphia-based company Rainpan 43. Their poised routines of slapstick and pratfalls were first seen at Edinburgh in 2005, and come to the capital now as part of the London International Festival of Mime. Situated at the junction between the movie screen and live action - already well mined by British companies such as Forkbeard Fantasy - All Wear Bowlers offers up a hapless pair of silent movie actors who fall off the screen and into the auditorium, and find that they can't get back.
Confronted by the audience, the pair watch us carefully as if we, rather than them, should be providing the entertainment. "It's OK, there's only one of them and two of us," confides one clown to the other, nervously eyeing the audience, in one of many nods and winks towards theatrical convention.
This is a slick piece of visual theatre, full of split-second timing, particularly in the opening sequence in which the pair pop in and out of the film like demented ping-pong balls. There are moments when it is not just clever but blissfully funny, especially in the interactions with the audience: a woman is apparently abducted into a movie only to reappear out of the side of the screen again; a borrowed coat turns out to have a revolver in the pocket.
Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford turn their hand to every music hall trick in the book, from the magic of materialising eggs to an unsettling sequence of ventriloquism. But though it is snappy and playful and undoubtedly skillful, the production often feels like a series of set pieces rather than a meaningful exploration of the nature of identity and existence. In its eagerness to please it dispenses with genuine emotion, and although Sobelle and Lyford are engaging, they lack the pathos necessary to add some much-needed philosophy to the pratfalls. There is never enough desperation in their clowning. Nor the necessary sense of deep loneliness and dislocation that would transform this from a nice show into a great one. You admire all the ingenuity without caring much about whether the pair will make it back into the movie in time for the final reel.
·Until January 28. Box office: 0845 120 7548.
