New York company The Civilians arrive at the Gate with its musical "mockumentary" about the things that New Yorkers have lost in their city, and I can only assume that something has gone missing over the Atlantic.
Working in the fashionable area of documentary theatre, they interview real people - in this case on the subject of loss, so we get lost scarves, shoes, husbands and inheritances among other things - and then make a bit of a song and dance about it.
The form is bizarre, like a cabaret circa 1962 crossed with sketch comedy and performance art. It is not a happy mix, and the potentially interesting individual stories of those interviewed are treated with what seems like contempt as they are submerged into kooky yet anodyne showbiz soup. The besuited performers are all pleasant enough, but nothing they do or say is either particularly droll or insightful. Despite the references to Freud, who believed that when we lose things - even if it is just the car keys - we do so for deep-seated reasons, it never prods at the unconscious and it treats the loss of a pair of Gucci pumps in exactly the same way it treats a lost dog, person or city.
References to those who went missing on 9/11 seem merely calculated rather than serving any greater purpose. The show lacks sharp wit, but, most of all, it lacks a sharp intellect - it just full of muzzy, undirected emotion. Perhaps there is something lost in translation, and perhaps it simply shows up the gulf between between the New York and London mindsets, but the Gate must have lost its marbles to be inviting this indifferent show through its doors. I wish I'd got lost on the way to the theatre.
· Until May 22. Box office: 020-7229 0706.
