Two women face each other across a room lit by many small table lamps, which look like homely stars in the darkness. One woman is bound and gagged; the other just can't stop talking. The words rush out of her in avalanches: jagged fragments of myth and memory, stories where Mrs Pepperpot, Harry Potter and Narnia meet Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, where wars are endlessly won and lost and the alchemists' search is not for precious metal but black gold - oil. Who are these women? CIA agents? Terrorists? A couple of angels? And who is the man who wanders around like a superannuated park-keeper?
A theatre piece by a playwright who calls himself Mr Social Control doesn't sound promising - but it turns out that Mr Social Control has quite a way with words. Although there are far too many of them, and the show often slips into a mixture of the pretentious and the preachy, this brief evening always holds the attention.
In part this is because it focuses on contemporary politics, particularly the war in Iraq and Bush's latter-day self-styled crusade against terrorism - however verbosely and tortuously it tries to do so. The piece reminds us that we must understand the past and remember those stories that have been told again and again through the centuries.
It is also beautiful to look at, which is pretty much what you would expect from a show directed by former Primitive Science collaborator Boz Temple-Morris. Beautiful, but a bit inert. The various elements of the show never meld and mix: there is skill here, but no alchemy. The whole evening feels slightly smug and patronising, like a Sunday-school meeting. It also lacks levity, although I did like the moment when one of the characters opines: "Middlesbrough was, of course, what they called Byzantium in my youth."
But, for a first effort from a new company, the show has promise and a highly developed sense of style. And it is very decently acted. At the end, the table lamps pop and die; it felt as if the stars had gone out all over the world.
· Until July 5. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
