Pilot Theatre works on the principle that the best way to prise young people from video games is to create theatre that looks like a video game. Director Marcus Romer specialises in transforming cult novels into high-tech stage fantasias, and Melvin Burgess's futuristic revenge saga about feuding clones and feral ragamuffins is an obvious target for the multimedia treatment.
Burgess originally took his inspiration from the Icelandic sagas, which have provided story elements for such varied works as Romeo and Juliet, The Lord of the Rings and Blade Runner. Bloodtide contrives to be all these things and less. Fourteen-year-old Signy attempts to make peace by marrying the head of a rival clan; he responds by breaking her legs and feeding her brother to a giant pig. It climaxes in an orgy of people shooting each other and shouting.
Pilot trademarks such as video projection and a thudding techno soundtrack combine with the austere ironwork of Ali Allen's set to suggest a smouldering city of ducts, grilles and catwalks. It all looks highly convincing; it's the language that lets things down. Successful science fiction needs to sustain the illusion of an alternative universe, yet here the cast struggle to say lines such as "Dag is waiting with the cloning tank" without sounding faintly ridiculous.
Romer's adaptation is pretty starved of poetry, and what there is has mostly been transplanted from Macbeth. Pilot can usually be relied on to provide edgy, aggressive and innovative work, but ultimately, Bloodtide is a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568.
