I cordially disliked Robert Wilson's last Barbican show, Woyzeck, because it smothered Buchner's realistic play in visual chic. But this version of a German fairy tale - the source of Weber's Der Freischutz - combines the talents of William Burroughs (text), Tom Waits (music and lyrics) and Marianne Faithfull (as the diabolical Pegleg) and has a wonderful Wilsonian eclecticism.
The starting point is a story about a clerk who inadvertently kills the forester's daughter he hopes to marry with one of the magic bullets he has been offered by the devil. There are strong echoes of Faust and Peer Gynt. But Burroughs highlights the tale's hallucinogenic qualities, telling us that "the magic bullets lead to devil's work like marijuana leads to heroin". He even throws in an extended verbal riff comparing the pact-making hero, Wilhelm, to Hemingway, who sold out to Hollywood.
This is all part of a richly allusive, if over-extended, evening. Wilson's images embrace everything from medieval woodcuts to Matisse trees and Picasso doves. Waits's score, exuberantly conducted by Bent Clausen, nods towards the blues, Kurt Weill and even Jewish klezmer music. And the performers achieve the right degree of knowing stylisation. Faithfull may not be the sylph-like figure one remembers from the 1960s but her pigtailed, red-suited Pegleg has a growling authority. Matt McGrath as the duped clerk also displays the right tragic innocence and conveys the hero's descent into madness through an extraordinary striptease. But the evening as a whole works because Wilson turns a Germanic legend into an ironic, faintly decadent cabaret.
· Until June 12. Box office: 0845 120 7550.
