On paper, it looked good. The fine actor Andy Serkis makes his directorial debut with a play by best-selling novelist Patrick Suskind, performed by a very experienced actor, Bev Willis.
Well, it just goes to show how wrong you can be. London's fringe theatre offers a myriad of possibilities; it and can be many things, but what it should never be is the theatrical equivalent of a vanity publishing project. Alas, that is very much what this production - based on Suskind's story of a not-very-successful musician's love-hate relationship with his double bass - feels like. This is a so-so, one-person play, adequately performed and directed, but no more. It lacks that essential spark.
It will be of most interest to devotees of Suskind's best-selling 1979 novel, Perfume, a highly scented tale of dark obsession. The obsession is here, too, as the semi-clad musician pads about his flat bemoaning his insignificance as the lowly bassist in the government orchestra, haranguing Wagner and confessing his devotion to a mezzo-soprano who barely even notices his existence.
The 75-minute production can never make up its mind whether it wants to be an over-extended music history lesson or a knottier tale of thwarted love and desire, in which the double bass takes on all the attributes of a person in the musician's mind. The instrument appears to be hindering his attempts to forge a relationship with the singer, and it also becomes - rather inevitably - a stand-in for the body of the woman herself.
Bev Willis is ill at ease as the musician, gabbling the lines like a high-speed train about to go off the tracks. He will surely go on to give a more confident performance later in the run, but even if he was brilliant, it would not pull this mediocre offering above the very ordinary.
Southwark Playhouse, one of London's most engaging small spaces, is currently celebrating its 10th anniversary. By giving house room to this production, it does its reputation no good at all.
· Until October 11. Box office 020-7620 3494.
