Are you a dreamer or a realist? Do you want your theatre whimsical or hard and gritty? In the Victorian theatre of the opiate-addicted actor-manager Edward Gant and his Midget Opera Company, there are plenty of fables and fairy tales for the broken-hearted.
Roll up for the tragical story of the teenage beauty whose happiness is destroyed when her face erupts into pustules that miraculously yield pearls. Hear the painful history of Edgar, whose dead beloved's face haunts him so dreadfully that he seeks a drastic solution with the aid of a fake fakir. There is always someone who will take advantage of the outcasts, the unloved and the unhappy. That is what a freak show is, after all.
Anthony Neilson is best known as a purveyor of strong, meaty theatre with pieces such as Penetrator. This devised show is in a lighter vein, but he has lost none of his ability to sweep the theatrical carpet from under your feet, as he did so deftly in The Censor. He teases you with laughter and then lets you glimpse his bloody, tender heart.
Much of the pleasure of the evening is in the way it captures the peculiar atmosphere of the freak show, and crosses it with other theatrical conventions such as melodrama. Neilson and his cast cleverly use these heightened theatrical forms to explore the nature of theatre itself: they show how theatre can become a refuge, and come up with a convincing argument that stories show us how to live, helping us to see the beauty of the failed and the freakish.
They also revel in comedy, while suggesting that escapism alone is not enough. The show is mournfully funny and would be even more so if the cast could be persuaded to keep a straight face throughout.
Like a lot of devised work, it is a little too rough around the edges, but there is nothing that a few more weeks of development and rehearsal couldn't put right. Something like a cross between a Spymonkey show and a small-scale Shockheaded Peter, this piece could have real cult potential if it had a further life.
· Until May 25. Box office: 01752 267222.
