Puppetry, or at least good puppetry, gives life to the inanimate. Before the audience's eyes a piece of carved wood or merely a bundle of rags takes on a personality, walks and even talks. We believe in the puppet as a completely separate entity from the puppeteer.
Doo-Cot is a company that over the years has often breathed life into the inert and here that art becomes multi-layered and full of resonance as puppetry, video technology and animation and life performance collide to tell the story of the Golem.
The Jewish population of 16th-century Prague was under continual threat of persecution, so the local rabbi created a "living man" made from clay and breathed life into him. When the community was threatened, the Golem would take to the streets deterring those who intended foul play.
In Jewish legend there are many variations of this story of the Golem protecting Jews from persecution, but in all the Golem has a double function both as protector and potential monster who can run amok.
Doo-Cot plays with variations on this theme in a show that is immensely frustrating because it has such enormous potential. Its melding of the dreams and nightmares both of the mind and reality and its mixture of different mediums make it beautiful to watch and hear, but while it is constantly intriguing it is not always coherent to those unversed in Jewish folklore and mysticism.
It has many extraordinary moments - a trail of footprints in blood, the video testimony of an old man's childhood persecution in Poland, the tingle down the spine as the Golem is bathed in light and life - but the whole piece seems such a personal meditation on the part of its creators that it doesn't yield up its meanings easily.
Reading the programme first will help, but a show that makes obscurity such a virtue needs a rethink.
· Until November 2. Box office: 020-7307 5060
