It is possible for a show to be tiresome and intriguing, infuriating and beguiling at the same time - and this evening proves it. Performance Collective has taken what you can only imagine was an exceptionally dull play by Karst Woudstra, whose title translates as Burying the Dog, and well and truly buried it. It has been transformed into a knowing theatrical joke.
On entering the theatre you are welcomed by three people who claim to be Dutch, and not to be actors. There's Peter, a former advertising-space salesman, his girlfriend Muriel and his older brother Bart. They tell us that they are not going to perform, rather they are going to reconstruct one particular, rather traumatic night in their lives when Bart, then estranged from his brother, unexpectedly turned up at Peter's Amsterdam flat followed by a stray dog.
What follows is an examination of reality and fantasy, what is true and what we think is true. It pivots on Peter and Bart's childhood, Peter's belief that their father was a closet Nazi, and Bart's entirely different, completely plausible explanation for their father's behaviour. The discrepancy between how things appear and how they really are is emphasised by Muriel, who appears to be about to give birth but is in fact suffering from a phantom pregnancy. Every now and again the trio break off the "performance" to try and flog a painting.
It is great to see this young company experimenting so playfully with form, but the piece employs so many distancing devices that it is slightly in danger of detaching the audience entirely. The only point when you really feel involved is during the telling of a Heiner Müller story about a man who, on hearing of Hitler's suicide, took his wife and daughter into the forest and slaughtered them. Those who favour content over form may be left a little cold by the 90 minutes, but the whole thing is done with enough chutzpah and winning wit to make up for the emotional chilliness of the evening.
· Until January 27. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
