Hold on tight, it is going to be a bumpy ride! Carnesky's Ghost Train lasts only 10 minutes, but it spans centuries of European culture and the experience of women as daughters, lovers and survivors of the Holocaust, emigration and modern day sex slavery.
The great beauty of Carnesky's Ghost Train - and it is a shabby, faded, ornate, fairground beauty, like an exquisite woman past her prime - is that you can see as much or as little in it as you want. It offers a looking glass into a secret, dark world where ghostly Rapunzels let down their hair, a woman plunges her hands through glass, a finger beckons you towards disaster and the sound of wailing sirens.
On one hand, it is merely a thoroughly enjoyable and superior fairground ride -quite the spookiest and most magical ghost train you'll ever experience, and one that the kids will find a real thrill. On the other, it is an artful theatrical installation that combines all the fun of the fair with a serious and very adult meditation on eastern European heritage. Even in its brevity it manages to touch on the haunting pain of real experiences in which grotesque fairytale meets 19th- and 20th-century history head on.
After purchasing a ticket from the booth, you are directed towards the train and ordered into place by a gun-toting, tutu-wearing guard. It is impossible not to be reminded of those millions of people from the middle part of the 20th century who were packed on to trains bound for annihilation, but there is little time to reflect before the curtain falls (rather than rising, as it does in most theatrical events). You are plunged into darkness and sent spinning on several disorienting circuits during which apparitions flit before your disbelieving eyes.
Likely to be one of the most talked-about pieces of theatre this year, Carnesky's Ghost Train is a marvellous mix of technical wizardry and sheer heart and soul. Its potential as a piece of on-going, ever-changing and developing theatre is enormous. For the same amount of money as a single West End theatre ticket you could ride the ghost train eight times - and feel as though you've experienced something different on each occasion.
· Until September 23. Details: 020-7053 2000.
