Angela Clerkin runs with the Improbable Theatre crowd, so story telling should be her forte, but somehow the story gets lost in this solo show that ponders the gap between our childhood dreams and what we have actually become by the time we turn 40. Set amid the debris of a birthday party-champagne, cake and sad balloons, Clerkin takes us on a investigation into her past to discover who murdered the girlish hopes she once cherished.
The trouble is that there are almost too many strands of story at work here and the film noirish thriller never successfully meshes with the glamorous actress in the red dress or the performer who emerges in an outsize polystyrene egg costume as her own over-excited giggly littleembryo. "I am going to be a famous actress and rich. I am going to be a saint and horribly maimed." Some of this show is quite cracked-in the most appealing way.
When it is not being over-laden with themes, the show inclines towards the knowing and the slightly arch, when what it really needs is a good dose of real emotion. It is as if Clerkin cannot really face her real demons and is determined to make a joke of everything. The contrast between this and Bobby Baker's very simple and very affecting Box Story, to which this bears some resemblance, is telling, and a sharp reminder that while everyone has a story to tell it is finding the right form for that story that is so important.
With a lot more work The Dream Killers really could be something special, and as it is Clerkin is as usual a pleasure to watch. But at the moment like the 97 per cent of the population who reach 40 and feel that they have failed to fulfil their dreams, there is a gap in this show between what it could be and what it actually is.
· Until March 7. Box office: 020-7307 5060
