If you are familiar with Complicite's work, you will know Tim Barlow: he was the tall, wild looking one in More Bigger Snacks Now. He has also played the Fool and the title role in King Lear, had a season at the RSC and enjoyed success with his one-man show My Army. Which is all the more remarkable because he is completely deaf - a result of close contact with high-velocity rifles while in the army - and had lost his hearing a decade before he decided to become an actor.
This was in the 1960s, long before the notion of disabled access to the arts. "I view with alarm the pursuit of such entry into the theatre with such a disability," advised the principal of Rada. Laurence Olivier urged him to persevere. Barlow did, although it cost him his army pension, and his wife and children too.
This autobiographical show is sharp and funny ("I can't hear a thing. So if you want to heckle write it down on a piece of paper and pass it on.") but it is frayed around the edges with a wistful sadness, a sense of both something gained and something lost. It suffers from the difficulty of so many one-man shows in finding a dramatic reason for the confessions it offers up, but that little awkwardness is soon lost in a piece which cunningly links the moon landings with Barlow's own aspirations to reach for the apparently unattainable.
It is a warm, inspiring show that both celebrates the art of acting, but also reminds us that "it's only dressing up"... and you just have to "let it happen". Barlow has, and the result is thoroughly entertaining.
· Until April 15. Box office: 020-7223 2223. Then touring.
