Over the past few years Primitive Science has established itself as a major visual-theatre company. There is nobody else in Britain who creates work that is so ravishing. But just as so much mainstream, text-based work is drama but not theatre, Primitive Science sometimes falls into the trap of making work that is theatrical but not dramatic.
This is exactly what happens to its slight revenge story about global warming and Poseidon, in which the god is presented as a middle-aged bureaucrat, concerned that his brothers Zeus and Hades have got all the best jobs. He is keen to assert his place in the pecking order, but the real blow comes when his nephew Hermes turns up and slyly announces that humans no longer believe in the god of the seas any more than they believe in Father Christmas.
It is a mildly amusing hour, reminiscent of a Radio 4 Peter Tinniswood monologue that has been mugged by performance art, but the lack of substance in the writing makes the visual element of the production look like mere prettified trappings.
Having said that, if you've not yet caught a Primitive Science show, and so are unfamiliar with its use of water, you will probably be knocked sideways by a production in which the action is presented entirely through a fine film of drizzle. For the rest of us, beautiful though it is, Primitive Science has done the same thing much better before.
Till May 27. Box office: 020-7928 6363.
