Rape, mob murder, lust and self-cannibalism are the subjects for the latest walkabout family show from the London Bubble, and it's all the better for it.
Like Carol Ann Duffy's version of Grimm's tales, Simon Startin's pick 'n' mix from Ovid's tales of transformation doesn't shirk the darker side of human - or divine - nature. Those who offend the gods and nature are brutally punished, and love seldom runs smooth. Orpheus loses his heart, his wife and then every limb so he is simply a head bobbing down a river; the child of the sun demands his birthright and scorches the earth as he is burned to a cinder.
Diana, the huntress, takes her revenge on those who look upon her. People have a nasty habit of turning into trees. It should be quite magical and it does has small moments of pleasure, some of them almost incidental, such the tiny twinkling installations you pass as you promenade from one part of the park to the next. But as well as being excruciatingly over-extended, the format of the piece doesn't give you enough to get your teeth into. It's all bits and pieces. The stories that work best are the ones given time to breathe.
It also doesn't help that the tone is so relentlessly glib, as if nobody involved believes that these ancient tales really can talk to contemporary audiences. Sometimes the jokiness works well, as when the mother packing her son off to find his father, the Sun, presents him with an London Underground Oyster card, but often - particularly in the opening creation sequence - it is just irritating, and ultimately robs the tales of any emotional depth. Only the ingenious and simple telling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, using the figures from the top of the wedding cake, has the mythic power to move.
· Touring until August 20. Box office: 020-7237 1663.
