The car park of Oxford's BMW plant may not be the most promising setting for a show, but the gorgeous mirror tent in which Creation perform weaves a magic spell all of its own. The canopied ceiling is a patchwork of fairy lights, and wandering branches coil around the edges as if nature is trying to invade.
There is a wildness at the heart of these early 19th-century folktales that comes from the oral tradition of listening to stories to block out the melancholic symphony of howling wolves in the woods. Lucy Wilkinson's design recognises this, with its tiny lantern cottages giving a welcome glow in the dark woods where Hansel and Gretel encounter the witch and Little Red Cap is gobbled by the wolf. Writer and director Gari Jones understands that these stories are as unforgiving as the frozen winter ground and softens the blow with comedy: a screaming mandrake; dwarves who are over-eager in offering Snow White mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Jones ingeniously melds tales together, but Jones the writer and Jones the director don't serve each other well. The writing has none of the poetry or wit of Carol Ann Duffy's magnificent version of these same tales, and the direction lacks visual imagination and physicality. Jones falls into the trap of so much of this kind of story-based theatre of telling rather than showing and, even more irritatingly, of telling and then showing us all over again. Several major developments in British theatre of recent years appear to have entirely passed Jones by, but the cast work hard and it certainly looks good enough to eat. But I know that Creation - and you - could do better.
· Until January 12. Box office: 01865 766266.
