When the owner of a rundown fairground bequeaths it to Pedro de Gonzago II, its future is in jeopardy. Pedro plans to bulldoze the site and turn it into a multi-storey car park. This is bad news for Ludmila Bulochka, still mourning her husband, Berto the Bullet, who was accidentally fired from his cannon into orbit around the moon. It is even worse news for put-upon fairground waif Cinderella.
There are plenty of good ideas floating around in this devised version of the well-known tale, but they are very seldom fully realised - although, like all devised work, the show will ripen during the run. A potentially interesting (if dangerously incomprehensible) prologue suggests there might be an original twist, but in the end the evening retreats into tradition. Fatally, it never makes up its mind whether it wants to be a pantomime or a play. It is never vulgar and funny enough for the former, or deep and magical enough for the latter. By the end you start wondering how such a rich story can seem so threadbare yet full of padding.
What saves the evening is that it looks so good. Anthony McIlwaine's design transports you to the gaudy, decrepit fairground, complete with working helter-skelter and carousel, and shows you the beauty in the ramshackle and ruinous. The true transformation here is in the dust-sheeted silent carousel that suddenly springs to life to facilitate Cinderella's journey from ashes to throne.
You keep looking in vain for the shiver-down-the-spine theatricality that director Dan Jemmett brought to his work with Primitive Science, or to his Ubu at the Young Vic - a memorable line in the indifferent script, for instance, or a real sense of wonder. Given the calibre of all involved, this is a major disappointment.
· Until January 10. Box office: 08700 500 511.
