The costumes are wonderful - and if that sounds like a desperate attempt to praise, it is. The King Stag should have been one of the most exciting productions in this year's Bite season, not least because it allows those who dislike recent Disney to enjoy the work of Julie Taymor, award-winning designer of the stage version of The Lion King. But by some terrible twist of fate Andrei Serban's production has all the swaggering mawkishness of Disney's newer work.
It hammers out its moral (it is the soul, not one's looks, that counts) with nauseating clarity. Worse, Albert Bermel's plodding English version of Carlo Gozzi's play lacks the sardonic sense of humour that makes Disney palatable.
If the staging is intermittently captivating, it is entirely down to Taymor. The King Stag is a tale in three parts, the first and third set in the palace of King Deramo, the second shifting to the Forest of Miracoli.
For the palace scenes the stage is dominated by a huge statue of a head, a lie detector that raises its eyebrows at hyperbole and roars with laughter when it hears untruths. Most of Taymor's magic, however, is cast in the forest.
The statue lifts to reveal a blank screen against which play astonishingly elastic shadow puppets; a bear bounds across the stage, followed by dancing birds and two dreamy, iridescent stags. This is all elegant, surprising, exquisite.
It is also in the forest that Serban's jittery direction begins to make sense, as the actors' leaps and somersaults across the stage attain a balletic beauty. In the palace scenes, however, the incessant gesticulation feels distractingly busy. And Taymor's costumes tend here towards oversimplification.
She dresses the story's two good-hearted girls in candy colours and clashing patterns; the bad guy, however, wears a mask sagging with fat and is shrouded in black (by discomforting coincidence, he is also played by the only black actor in the ensemble).
The best children's entertainment enlightens adults too. The King Stag, for all its magical design and brilliantly executed puppetry, inspires at best a reluctant admiration: it never touches the heart.
Until September 2. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
