In Howard Barker's latest play, Geraldine Alexander plays Sleev - the lady of the manor whose husband has been killed in a war that is still waging. As the war draws ever closer, Sleev and her ladies create a tapestry, a monument to her dead husband's life and their 20-year marriage. But Sleev has been no Penelope, that "patient packet of fidelity" as she puts it. In the quest to really know herself, Sleev insists on telling the truth in the tapestry whatever the consequences, weaving her own life in for all to see. In the process she goes blind.
We are in familiar Barker territory here, and as in his knotty Scenes from an Execution there is a trenchant debate at the heart of this play about the purpose of art and where the self of the artist is placed within it. But Barker, who also directs, can be his own worst enemy. What might be done with economy is done with such defeating density and coolness that I felt entirely detached. Like his own heroine, Barker presents a face to the world that is insanely heroic and wilful; I just wish he would get himself a director and dramaturg. British theatre needs Barker at his brilliant best not as a pale reflection of himself.
· Until April 19. Box office: 020-7908 4800.
