The British Festival of Visual Theatre ends with David Gale's theatre piece. It begins with eight people - four men and four women - sitting in a row dressed as if for a cocktail party. Suddenly one of them leans forward and we are plunged into the world beneath the rules of polite behaviour and social engagement. The woman who fails to introduce herself in the correct manner is given short shrift. Another, whose small talk turns serious, her state of mind increasingly in doubt, suddenly finds that her audience evaporates. Madness, after all, might be catching. There are snarls lurking under all these smiles.
Initially David Gale's performance piece seems like a Pinter play without real characters, where the real drama is in the silences between the words. As it continues it becomes clear that it is much more to do with the behaviour of the group as it is with individuals. One woman's story about meeting a small child alone in the park develops speedily into a shocking playlet in which adults' real feelings towards children are exposed. "Up a kiddie's arse. It makes my blood boil," screams a man with appalling choleric ecstasy.
Soon we are deeper and deeper into the group mentality as trance and possession take hold and everyone is wandering around in the desert during the Gulf War possessed by the spirit of Elton John. This is funny, though never quite as hysterical as perhaps it should be, and it comes too late to save the evening from its own too serious fixation with psychobabble.
This is a clever 70 minutes but never an engaging one. The programme, which includes essays by Gale and others on hypnosis, dancing with the fairies and alien abduction is much more interesting than anything that takes place on stage. There is a huge gap between the inspiration for the show and its realisation.
What keeps your interest, is not the evening's intellectual or theatrical thrust, but the remarkable performances from the actors. Their obscenities, gurning features and physical ravages make Linda Blair in The Exorcist look like an amateur.
Until November 4. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
