It sounds like a sketch from a comedy show: the 1942-3 battle of Stalingrad, a decisive defeat of Nazi Germany that claimed over a million lives, as re-enacted by marionettes. In fact, this production from Georgia's Tbilisi Marionette Theatre is shrouded in high seriousness. But while its scenes of death and destruction pummel the emotions, its earnestness also veers dangerously close to unintentional humour.
The scenes of battle themselves have a powerful simplicity. Sheets covered in rows of tiny helmets shuffle across the stage; the scream of bombs and cascades of bullets puncture the air. There is a heartbreaking moment when an electrician protects himself from the fire using nothing but a parasol. This image pinpoints director Rezo Gabriadze's real interest: not the battle itself but its effect on everyday life, on attempts to live and love in a world reeling with violence.
We meet an ice-cream seller from Odessa who sleeps in the burnt-out shell of a plane on the battlefield; he becomes a war hero but loses his girlfriend to another man. We follow the fractured affair between two circus horses, Allocha and Natacha: their parting in a Berlin cafe in 1937; their brief, cool meeting a few years later; Allocha's death and resurrection by a fairy; Natacha's death. This is the stuff of melodrama, but it is so beautifully conceived, particularly the moment when the two animals twine their necks in suffering, that it is hard not to be moved. When we see an ant whose son has been trampled by a man's boot, however, and hear her weep that the death of men and the loss of cannons have been counted, but not the death toll of ants, it is hard to suppress a laugh.
Technically, too, the show never fully hits the mark. The puppets are exquisitely detailed: miniature cigarettes emit trails of smoke, tiny hands remove delicately tailored hats. The scenery is just as beguiling: an opening sequence in which a train travels through Russia as dusk falls offers striking images of rickety telegraph poles and broken-down farms. At times we could be seeing paintings by Chagall brought to life; certainly Natacha and Allocha's scenes together have that romantic, otherworldly quality.
But the mawkish text, and particularly its presentation, gives the evening an amateurish air. A tape of actors from Odessa speaking the dialogue is overlaid with a recorded translation from Sam West that is curiously lacking in nuance. The two languages graze each other. Surely headsets offering either recording would have been preferable.
· Until November 9. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
