The runner-up in this year's James Menzies-Kitchen awards is Sam Leifer, and while I am sure, like previous winners and runners-up, he will go on to do some great work, this isn't it. Leifer is slightly unlucky in his timing: only two weeks ago the Steam Engine's superior version of the Children of Hercules opened at Scoop, the free amphitheatre at More London. It covers much of the same ground as this play but in a far knottier and more interesting fashion.
In The Suppliants, three young women turn up in Argos seeking refuge from their cousins who are determined to rape them. The king of Argos is faced with a dilemma. Should he protect them and risk war or turn them away and so face the wrath of Zeus, who charges the city to look after refugees?
You can't doubt the pertinence of this play at a time when immigration hysteria regularly dominates the front pages, but as we only see the king's decision and not the full consequences, the piece lacks the wider resonances of Children of Hercules. The production is very uneven, too. It looks very good in Lucy Osborne's simple design, which carpets the theatre with gravel and is dominated by a rough-hewn Zeus, but the pacing of the production is erratic and the performances don't always avoid the weeping, wailing and wringing-of-hands tendency that ancient Greek drama so often seems to bring out in British actors.
Just a few years after it premiered at the Gate, James Kerr's version already feels slightly old-fashioned, lacking the spare poetry of other more recent Greek translations. It is a decent enough stab at the play, but it also serves as a reminder that it is the choices made by a director before he or she begins rehearsals that mean the difference between success and failure.
· Until August 7. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
