Based on a short story by Gabriel García Márquez and performed by an Indian company in Hindi, this hybrid is curious but not uninteresting - though, at close to two hours, it stretches the patience.
It tells the story of 12-year-old Erendira, a Cinderella at the beck and call of her grandmother, whose night-time candle catches the curtains and burns down granny's house. Grandmother says the child must pay, and sells her virginity to the local shopkeeper before hawking her around the region as a prostitute. Misfortune is Erendira's second name until she falls in love with a client and he with her.
Performed by Delhi's leading company, TV and Theatre Associates, this is not very sophisticated and hardly qualifies as good taste theatre. In many respects it resembles a gaudy pantomime. But its childlike spirit is immensely appealing, with swirls of energy and colour, and it positively belches with (low) life.
The dislocation of experience and the sense of a fragmented self is also well conveyed with several actors playing Erendira, sometimes moving individually and sometimes suggesting one great body.
It does what it does rather well, and there is plenty to enjoy from the music to the movement that constantly suggests love is a dance. But this is a show that lays its cards on the table at the start and then keeps doing the same thing. Still, it is certainly different, and it is good to see the ICA again developing a serious theatre policy and offering an alternative to the mainstream.
· Until May 22. Box office: 020-7930 3647.
