Food brings people together. It also highlights the differences between them. In this verbatim theatre piece, first produced at London's Gate theatre last year and based on interviews conducted in the autumn of 2003 with people living in Israel and on the West Bank, food is central.
The mother of a Palestinian killed in an Israeli mortar attack recalls the last meal her "martyr" son ate before his death; the owner of a cafe tells how he makes his hummus, famed for miles around, that nobody comes to eat because roadblocks make it impossible for people to get from the outlying village to his premises. A mother prepares with patient love and care a new-year supper for her family. The falafel shop owner gives us his secret recipe and tells of the suicide bomb attack on his shop. A woman recounts how she returned to a bombed supermarket to reclaim her shopping and saw a sight that now haunts her.
So many stories, so many points of view, so many different truths. The strength of this kind of theatre is that it allows people to speak for themselves, is even-handed in the way it presents those on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, as well as those caught in the crossfire. It quickly becomes clear that the idea that the Palestinians eat only fattoush while rich Israelis scoff sushi and tagliatelle is only a partial truth. There are many partial truths here and they are part of an impressionistic jigsaw that gradually builds up a bigger picture.
But not always the whole picture. This show is heartfelt and entirely honest on its own terms, but it makes too many assumptions about the audience's knowledge and there are almost too many voices in a long evening. Robin Soans, whose Talking With Terrorists is currently at the Royal Court, has failed to shape the material here in such a way that gives it a narrative thread.
Even the central food motif seems like a theatrical contrivance into which the testimonies have been moulded. The fact that you neither smell nor get to taste the food apparently prepared on stage adds to the sense that it is a mere device. The brilliance of the performances ensures that the evening doesn't fail to move, but it does fail to surprise in any way.
· Until August 6. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
