This is one of those shows that puts the theatre critic in an impossible position. Tell the truth - that this is merely an adequate theatrical experience - and you risk looking mean-spirited. Rave, because the show brings audiences to their feet with tears in their eyes, and you are not actually doing your job as a critic.
Based on the true-life experiences of the young cast who lived under South Africa's apartheid regime, Amajuba was cheered to the rafters during its brief runs at the Barbican and in Edinburgh last year. But it is one of those works that elicit standing ovations not because they are thrilling theatre, but because of what they represent: in this case, the survival of the human spirit through terrible adversity.
In a great theatre show, these two things meet and ignite. And there have been plenty of such shows from South Africa - although more during the apartheid regime than after it, reminding us of theatre's vital function as an oppositional force. Amajuba, however, looks more like drama as therapy. Drama as therapy is of course an excellent thing, as long as you don't ask other people to pay to watch it.
Perhaps if it were played directly to its own community, this show would feel extraordinary. But playing to a largely white audience in London's West End, Amajuba looks like a fish out of water. The singing and dancing are perfectly pleasant, but nowhere near as exciting or professional as what we have seen before. And although the stories of families and lives torn apart by the apartheid laws are heartbreaking, the show's unique selling point - that these things really happened to the people telling them - is undermined by a script doused in therapy-speak and the poetic sentiments of a greetings card.
Amajuba is the theatrical equivalent of those memoirs at the top of the bestseller lists about terrible childhoods: it offers an emotional wallow without the responsibility of having to do anything.
· Until May 28. Box office: 020-7839 8311.
