When magpie Boria's old friend, Varlam, dies just after the first world war, the warm-hearted little bird resolves to look after Varlam's widow and save her from a life of poverty and drudgery as a cleaner at the local railway station. Thwarted in love when the young girl Nineli tells him that they are "separated by irreconcilable biological differences", Boria soon falls into an easy life of crime as he robs his way across Georgia. Before long, Boria is tried for his crimes and ends up condemned to live the rest of his life in the window of a pet shop.
Part parable, part fairy tale and part social-realist drama, the Tbilisi Marionette Theatre's show is a very charming affair, with its wooden puppets, cut-out figures and rickety makeshift scenery. But its sweet naive style makes your teeth ache after a while. The show perks up after the first third when the script suddenly takes on a sly, earthy humour, but although it is very deftly done both the puppetry and narrative are too simple and folksy.
The company successfully create a complete world in which the new industrialised Georgia is set against its rural past and traditions with pylons and trains offset against the lives of people whose peasant tradition has seeped into their souls. The music, from chants to folk songs and pop, transports you across the seas. There are some good digs at authority too, including a dashing head of police on a horse and a prosecutor who demands that Boria receive the death penalty "in perpetuam". None the less the piece never seems more than a curio and it is infected by what may be a Georgian sensibility but which seems very close to sentimentality, best summed up by a fluffy heaven where the butterflies eternally hover.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0845 120 7511
