Clearly we are at an academic conference. One by one, the four members of the Götterdämmerung Academic Glommorate, known as Gag for short, take the podium. They start to tell us, in the kind of academic jargon that involves using five words when one would do, about a bizarre piece of research they undertook.
At some point in the past they were involved in a kidnapping. Their hostage, known as Hostage A or Tony, was held in a place that they knew nobody on campus would visit: the university studio theatre. Tony was under constant surveillance. But things didn't go according to plan.
For a start Tony refused to respond to the kidnappers in any way. Their research data was zero. The project in jeopardy, they decided to give Tony more stimuli: Indian takeaways and Chinese burns. In the mornings he had lessons in Norse mythology; in the afternoons he had to answer questions on the subject correctly or be tortured. By day 56 Tony was bruised, battered, going quietly mad and writing down the opening bars to Siegfried's funeral march from Wagner's Götterdämmerung in his journal.
Métro-Boulot-Dodo is one of the brightest of the new crop of theatre companies disregarding theatrical convention. Its latest show is smart, sassy and highly amusing, but somehow unsatisfyingly inconsequential. It intrigues and tickles its audience, but sometimes forgets that it has to entertain them for an hour. Often it feels like a single-joke show, albeit one that is brilliantly executed.
There are more serious points lurking beneath the piece's flip exterior. At its simplest it is an exposé of ethics and morality, and of the way academic research lends legitimacy to all kinds of unacceptable behaviour, including the torture of animals. You could also connect the ease with which the group slips into bullying and torture with human behaviour in general, and that of the Nazis in particular. Overall, though, it is an evening of more style than substance.
· At the John Leggott Studio, Scunthorpe (01724 282998), Thursday. Then touring to Bradford, Birmingham, Bedford and Chester.
