Theatre O's tales about the real people behind the faceless colleagues at the office was rather over-praised in Edinburgh last year. Over-excited by the company's physical-theatre skills, people started calling it the direct inheritor of the Complicite mantel. Rubbish. A year on we can see it for what it really is: an immensely promising young company that still needs to find material that matches its virtuoso physical skills, and which it can sustain over 90 minutes or more.
There is great fun to be had here and this show is much sharper and better observed than it was last year. But the three tales get gradually less compelling and the whole thing has the slight air of a showcase rather than a fully fledged performance.
The best part of the evening is at the beginning, as Joseph Alford's hen-pecked Mr Tibble rebels against his devilish wife (in Sarah Coxon's performance, more like a wild boar) and dispatches her to hell. Mr Tibble reappears in the second segment as the ardent suitor of fatally ill Amelia Sas, 28 but still under the thumb of her domineering parents. Together with Tibble she has one night of doing what she wants; her fragile heart soars and gives up the ghost. The final and least successful (because it is more predictable) piece concerns office boss Frank, who, deserted by his wife, seeks solace elsewhere.
One of the most encouraging things about the evening is the way that the company plays as much with language as it does with the body: Mrs Tile, for example, speaks a brilliant, aggressive gobbledegook of German and English. The whole evening relishes the comically macabre and is played on a simple set with two rails of clothes and a wardrobe that is used with considerable invention so it also appears as both lift and bed.
If I sound a little grudging about this company, it is only because I really believe that it has huge potential. It would be a great pity if the success of this nice but little show stopped it developing a new and more ambitious piece of work that would really test its skills.
Until August 4. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
