Written by the 12th-century Persian poet Nazami, Leili O Majnoun is the story of Gheiss, whose love for the beautiful Leili drives him insane so that he wanders the desert and becomes known as Majnoun, or the one mad with love. It is this text that is apparently the inspiration for this show from the Anglo-Iranian theatre company 30 Bird Productions. It is performed with agile skill in both English and Farsi. I say apparently because, playful, absurdist and comic though this show is in many ways, it is so obscure and makes such arcane references to Iranian history that for much of the time I had no idea what was going on.
What you can glean is that, for the Iranian, a love of your country can drive you mad. "If you love me, then you love my country," says the young Iranian woman who has just accepted a marriage proposal from her English lover but has told him that he will have to become a Muslim. There is a theme of exile (searching in London for the perfect kebab and having to settle for McDonald's) and a tension between east and west, tradition and modernity. The English ditty "Everything stops for tea" accompanies the forced modernisation reforms of the 1920s, which forbade the wearing of traditional clothing.
Some bits of the narrative appear to link up, others do not - I am still not sure where the headless puppets and Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder come in. Yet even at its most baffling, this is so deftly staged, so appealingly performed and has such high production values that it is impossible not to like, even though it is nearly impossible to uncover its meaning.
· Until April 18. Box office: 020-8237 1111.
