Tossed by the storms of fate and a giant octopus, fair-weather sailors Petunia and Daisy find themselves washed up in the seaside village of Beever, where they hope to find a fish supper and a cosy B&B for the night.
Beever, however, is a strange place - apparently straight out of a gothic horror movie - and its residents are stranger still, sporting a variety of preposterous accents, curious speech impediments and odd physical tics and deformities.
Undeterred by this, or the fact that the local B&B appears to be run by a couple of sex maniacs, the ever-optimistic Petunia and Daisy book themselves into room 13 and set about unlocking the secrets of the village, a place where both children and fish are mysteriously absent. Why can't Petunia buy a can of tuna in the local shop? Where is little Bessie, whose birthday cake Daisy is sent to deliver?
A cross between an Enid Blyton adventure and something by Tim Burton, this show from new company Moonhag is a load of entertaining codswallop. It would sit very nicely at the Edinburgh Fringe, where this kind of inventive and physical comedy-theatre always finds an audience, but seems a little thin when served up as a stand-alone show.
Like its pair of absurdly naive heroines, it has loads of brio. Part of its charm is that it doesn't take itself too seriously, although you do rather wish that its creators - Liz Hague and Kate Mooney - had given the plotting and structure of the piece more serious attention.
Hague and Mooney play all the characters, making a comic virtue of the fact they sometimes end up talking to themselves, but what this show really needs is the gimlet eye of an outside director, sternly insisting the duo cut back on the excesses, embed every character in the narrative, and don't take refuge in easy jokes and fluffiness.
· Until November 12. Box office: 0207-223 2223.
