Forgotten Voices puts the experiences of ordinary people centre stage, as it charts the consequences of the first world war on everyday lives. Set in London's Imperial War Museum in the late 1950s and based on real oral testimonies, the power of the material is never in question. Here are stories both familiar and not so familiar: chlorine gas attacks; the demise of a dysentery-afflicted soldier; a Vesta Tilly music hall turn being used by the army as a recruiting device; the bright-yellow skin of the girls in the munitions factory; the three years in the trenches in which only eight miles of ground was won.
These everyday stories of casual heroism and terrible loss are well worth hearing, but Malcolm McKay's listless production never finds the way to showcase them. The bringing together of the four men and a woman is contrived, and the attempt to move chronologically feels forced. Characters are sketchy at best - and cliched in the cases of the buttoned-up former captain and the working-class private. The lack of interaction is so marked that you wonder why they didn't present this in the style of Exonerated, with the actors sitting in a row.
The piece is heading to the Edinburgh festival. In its current form it might work on the radio, but it makes no claim for its place on a stage. A reminder of the limitations of verbatim theatre.
· Until July 7. Box office: 020-8237 1111
