Memory and photography are theatre's twin obsessions, and they come together in this mildly diverting performance from the young company In Bed All Day. It takes its inspiration from Italo Calvino's assertion that "in order to live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photagraphable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity, the second to madness."
In a white room, a stack of wall-mounted disposable cameras face the audience (it is interesting how aggressive the language of photography is, with its talk of shoots and blow-ups) and the walls are covered with slogans, such as: "Your body is a battleground" and "Who follows orders?" The audience is then led through a dark room, where film lies in developing trays, and into the theatre proper. Here, in a three-sided, dazzling white space, a pair in blue body suits posture and preen for the unseen camera, singing ironic little ditties: "We've got sparkle in our eyes/ To tell the public lots of ..." The audience supplies the missing word.
Much of this show feels like promising student work, poised between prank and precociousness. But it is done with considerable self-mocking style and flair, and you cannot help warming to a piece that, unlike so much current theatre, actually attempts to engage with political developments.
The trouble with Freeze is that it is too small and too baggy. It attempts to cover too much, from body image to war photography, and so succeeds only in being superficial. But it makes some neat points about the dangerous and potentially fatal seductive power of the camera, and reminds us that a life lived self-consciously is one that has lost all sense of self and understanding of others.
· Until March 2. Box office: 020-7739 5431.
