"Stories. That's what we want to see, that's what pulls us in every time," says a policeman at the start of this new piece from the Work Theatre Collective, winner of this year's Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust award.
It's advice that the company might well have heeded for, in attempting to create a multi-layered piece of work that covers all aspects of detonation - from the emotional shock of a terrorist act to a goulash exploding in a microwave - the Work Theatre Collective often fail to entertain us with a good yarn. This evening is as cold and white as Nicolai Hart-Hansen's chilly design.
This is the fourth year of the award - offering £35,000 to the winning company to create an innovative show - and I regret to say the productions are not getting any better, suggesting that the selection process needs a rethink.
Like previous shows, this probably looked good on paper, with its combination of filmic allusions to Hitchcock and Spielberg, its knowing use of surprise and suspense and its references to Baudrillard and Stockhausen, all wrapped up in an ambiguous thriller. Alas, in performance it comes across like a staged essay written by someone who has spent too much time on Google.
It is a pity, because the cast work hard to make the script sound believable. There are moments when you glimpse the kind of theatrical experience this might have been, had the production come near to melding the visual, emotional, intellectual and narrative elements into one explosive package.
· Until November 18. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
