You probably think you've seen the Arab-Israeli conflict from every possible perspective in recent years. But did you ever see it played as harum-scarum vaudeville? As a boxing match? As a squabble in a sandpit? It is all there in Gecko's The Arab and the Jew, an acrobatic, abstract and largely wordless two-hander tracing Middle Eastern relations from the afterlife back to the bomb that led there. And like an explosive device, Amit Lahav and Al Nedjari's danse macabre bypasses politics, illuminating the Arab-Israeli relationship as scorched fragments in a sometimes ravishing display of theatrical fireworks.
The show opens with Lahav and Nedjari tumbling from the sky into a square pit of sand. They don't know how they got there, they try to make friends - but soon they're clawing at each other for control of the territory. The connections between the scenes that follow are more lateral than literal, as the Arab's sensual, familial bond to the land is contrasted with the Jew's sense of spiritual entitlement. Nedjari hunkers down with a shisha pipe as orange trees sprout around him. Lahav ascends to heaven, cradled by mannequins' arms. Then they come together, to enact a Looney Toons cabaret in which their bloody conflict is burlesqued for our entertainment with toy guns and swannee whistles.
There are weak or unclear moments, including the duo's visit to a lap-dancing club and their portentous animation of a child's doll. But the show's images of miscommunication, futility and thwarted brotherhood grow ever more striking, as when Lahav and Nedjari each trace their own roads, lakes and mountains in the sand, like toddlers at play - or when the words of their furious argument are substituted by the sound of gunfire and detonating bombs. Much like these raging combatants, the show articulates little but expresses a lot.
· Until February 9. Box office: 0870 050 0511.
