Indisputably one of the great peaks of the Edwardian imagination, JM Barrie's enduring drama about the boy who wouldn't grow up hits a trough in Steven Dexter's lumbering production. How is it possible to make a play that speaks so eloquently to children and adults, and is full of such captivating magic, adventure and unresolved pain for the inevitability of adulthood, seem so very ordinary?
First you get Francis O'Connor to design a set that looks as if it has been constructed from a Tweenies set and my great-auntie Edna's net curtains. Then you make the world's least convincing dog costume for Nana, and throw in some flying that doesn't really count as flying - more as hanging about in mid-air. After that, all that is left to do is to employ a cast, who, with a couple of exceptions, don't seem to count acting among their skills, and to play the whole thing as if it were an upmarket panto. Even the crocodile is a disappointment, its ticking merely serving as a reminder that two and a half hours in the theatre can seem to pass as slowly as several centuries.
Things liven up a little when Anthony Head's Captain Hook (more of a scythe, actually) hits the decks and looks as if he may dispatch several of the juvenile leads with the lack of compassion that they deserve. However, even this performance is primed almost entirely by camp rather than depth. For modern audiences, to whom the psychological subtext is abundantly clear, it is a mistake not to double the roles of Hook and Mr Darling.
Elsewhere there are some truly dreadful performances, including a Peter Pan who, when he asks, "Oh, Tinker Bell, are you dying?" does it with all the emotion of a man enquiring after the next train to Reading. Katie Foster-Barnes's Wendy shows a little spark, but mostly demonstrates a genius for housework. It is a measure of the theatre-going public's apathy that we sat quietly in our seats and didn't storm the stage and make everyone walk the plank.
· Until March 20. Box office: 020-7836 8888.
