It is a big story, and the oldest ever told, but the epic Gilgamesh ends up seeming rather small and insignificant in this production by the Italian company Teatro Kismet. That's not because it only lasts 70 minutes, which is quite long enough, but because the storytelling isn't sharp enough, and the script - performed in a mix of English and Italian - is too busy being beautiful and poetic to get down to the narrative. The strongly visual performance is watchable but not enthralling or involving; it never transports you to another world.
This other world is circa 2700BC, between the Tigris and the Euphrates in the place we now call Iraq. Here King Gilgamesh is unrivalled in strength until a goddess makes him a brother who Gilgamesh hates but learns to love.
Gilgamesh then fights monsters and his own demons in his futile quest for eternal life. There are flashes of real flair in the staging, such as the arrival of Gilgamesh's brother Enkidu in a Damian Hirst-style liquid-filled display case, and the fight between the brothers conducted with a boxing match commentary. But too much of the evening mistakes hyperactivity for physical theatre, and although the last 15 minutes are stunning, socking it to the audience with a dazzling blizzard of rain and a hail of loud music, it's too much too late - the indoor equivalent of the outdoor spectacle that ends with crowd-pleasing fireworks.
You leave the theatre aware that you have been seduced by the ravishing spectacle and feeling manipulated. The last time Teatro Kismet came to the Brighton festival it was with a ripe and voluptuous retelling of Beauty and the Beast, a story that appears in almost all cultures around the world. In this instance the story is less familiar, and even after you have seen Teatro Kismet's version it stays that way.
· Until May 8. Box office: 01273 709709.
