Loosely inspired by Prosper Mérimée's Carmen, but apparently replacing themes of love and jealousy with those of freedom and slavery, the latest offering from cult St Petersburg company Akhe is not a patch on the brilliant White Cabin. Effectively a game for two actors, who use Carmen's absence to test the limits of the playing space and their relationship with each other, the show is small and fiddly rather than big and suggestive of grand passion.
Although fitfully amusing, it fails to convey any emotion whatsoever. Which may be the point, but it's a point that leaves the audience out of the theatrical equation. Akhe's co-founders, Maxim Isaev and Pavel Semchenko, construct a playing space that is more boxing ring than stage. While two tiny cut-out figures speed around the outside ropes, the actors spend the next 60 minutes slugging it out within the rectangle.
But this is a duel that doesn't involve fisticuffs. One performer finds different ways to write the name Carmen, using light, water, his body, spray paint; the other responds with the name José. What's in a name? Not a great deal unless, perhaps, it is written in blood. From the back rows of the ICA, where the stage seems very far away, it is a bit like watching a playground tiff, albeit one in which the protagonists use a fair amount of visual ingenuity to make their point.
There is no denying the skill involved, and the folky visuals are appealing, but this reeks of a show from a company with such a cult following that if they stood on stage and picked their noses, they would still be cheered to the rafters and awarded prizes at some obscure theatre festival somewhere.
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 020-7930 3647.
