Cartoon de Salvo is an engaging young physical theatre company with talent and an off-the-wall humour that has had some success, particularly with its postwar, skiffle-board version of Twelfth Night, called Meat and Two Veg.
By comparison, this latest piece, set in the boxing ring amid Victorian lowlife, seems puny. When prizefighter Pooley Mace points his dying mother towards the audience and observes, "There's nothing there", you want to throw the same accusation back at the stage.
This is 90 minutes spun largely out of false moustaches, a few good gags, a banjo and the undoubted personal charms of the three performers and co-devisers: David Bernstein, Guardian writer Brian Logan and Alex Murdoch.
I do, however, get tired of companies - and Cartoon de Salvo is not alone - who seem to think that, when creativity fails them, they will be able to get by on a conspiratorial smile to the audience. In theatre, as in life, charm has its limitations.
Mace is a penniless Gypsy who thinks he has landed on his feet when he is taken on as a boxer by the promoter Woodchester. But Woodchester is a Victorian comic-book villain, and soon the honest-but-poor Pooley is being forced to throw fights, bringing shame upon himself and his family.
What is more, his sister has fallen for the doubtful charms of Pooley's rival, Ned the Nutter. Soon a grudge bout is in the offing as Pooley fights for his honour. There are some laughaloud moments and the company play deftly with the conventions of theatre (the cast of three play a cast of thousands) and the audience as they move us around the theatre and down to the boxing ring.
But the show has no muscle and no discernible point except as a piece of whimsical light entertainment, and it is never funny or slick enough to justify itself on those grounds alone. It is not bad, but it is not good enough to put in front of an audience as a fully fledged show.
This show plays in rep with Meat and Two Veg. That is your best bet.
· Until March 6. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
