You can see why Thornton Wilder's 1942 play rarely gets done: it is long, repetitive and expensive. It also proves utterly irresistible in David Lan's staging, which not only suggests Wilder is the missing link between Pirandello and Ionesco but also gaily adds to the play's structured anarchy.
What Wilder offers is three variations on a theme: mankind's ability to survive disaster. In each of the three acts, we see a suburban New Jersey family, the Antrobuses, overcoming timeless catastrophes such as ice, flood and war. Alongside Wilder's American optimism about human tenacity goes a deterministic view of character that anticipates the European absurdists. Repeatedly, Mr Antrobus succumbs to despair, only to be rescued by his wife's practical efficiency while the sexy, materialistic maid, Sabina, looks on.
You could object to Wilder's reduction of humanity to a set of archetypes, or to his view of women as either homebodies or temptresses. But what gives his work its vitality is its abundant theatrical playfulness. Prehistoric animals prowl through a New Jersey sitting room. "Have you milked the mammoth?" Mrs Antrobus asks at one point. Actors step out of character to complain about their roles or the play's incomprehensibility. And the set is always on the verge of Noises Off-like disintegration. Wilder was a cosmopolitan intellectual who brought to theatre an innocent, childlike disruptiveness.
Lan and his brilliant designer, Richard Hudson, seize on this last quality. Hudson has created a solid-seeming traverse stage that sensationally collapses as the evening progresses. In the midst of the mayhem there is Indira Varma's wonderfully witty, skittering Sabina, who combines intoxicating allure with mounting desperation: "It's press night, for fuck's sake" she cries as flats keel over and lighting cues get lost. David Troughton likewise hilariously switches between the angst of the Everyman-hero and the agony of an actor caught up in a chaotic charade. Meanwhile, Maureen Beattie's Mrs Antrobus stoically soldiers on, even calming down her distraught fellow actors.
Wilder constantly reminds us that theatre is both a universal metaphor and an absurd game in which we are willing participants. Even if we can't fully share his optimism about mankind's ability to overcome global catastrophe, Lan's production is strangely moving in its affirmation of the eternal desire to make order out of chaos.
· Until April 10. Box office: 020-7928 6363.
