According to the Playhouse box office, subscribers have circumvented the indelicacy of Alan Bennett's title by requesting tickets for "the Kafka play". Yet anyone who associates Bennett with polite plays about stale crackers and dotty monarchs may suffer a rude awakening at a piece that includes formulations such as "flat as piss on a plate" among its metaphorical language.
I caught Cal McCrystal's production on a midweek matinee, which seemed to be putting the cat among the pensioners. And though the afternoon crowd had the good grace to chortle along gamely, it's far from certain whether it was Bennett they were laughing at.
McCrystal is director of comedy for Cirque du Soleil, which he takes as licence to clown around with Bennett's concept as offensively as he pleases. In the first of his supremely unfunny accretions, McCrystal appoints his leading actress, Sarah Brignall, an honorary dame, reasoning that no Bennett production is complete without one. Dame Sarah steps out to preface both acts with a couple of ungainly curtain speeches, including a wholly irrelevant multimedia tour of Derby.
Having introduced a dame, McCrystal then contrives to reduce the rest of the show to a pantomime. Lines are bellowed towards the audience, interspersed with cringing ad-libs and props casually tossed into the front rows. Speeches are cravenly upstaged by infantile flurries of business (no one can pour tea in this production without pinging sugar cubes at each other) or the gratuitous intrusion of puppet wildlife, including, at one point, a stray flamingo.
McCrystal might claim to be tapping into the anarchic surrealism of Bennett's script. But, given some trust and a straight production, one may find these things written in. As it is, this crass, self-satisfied hijack of an intelligent play falls flat as piss on a plate.
· Until November 27. Box office: 01332 363275.
