There is no doubt that Antonia Franceschi walked on a wilder side than most dancers. Raised by a damaged, neglectful mother in tough New York, she spent her childhood fighting with gangs and flirting with drugs. This tiny blonde might have been destined for disaster, except that she went to ballet class and discovered a talent for flight. For years she kept her dancing secret, fearing the punishment meted out to deserters. But a place at the High School of Performing Arts launched her into the movies Grease and Fame and a job with New York City Ballet.
It is a powerful story, but the problem with Franceschi's telling of it is that it sounds only partly credible. Up From the Waste is a collage of Franceschi's narrative, delivered by herself and actors Clare Holman and Ian Knowles, plus a couple of film interludes and dance sections for Franceschi and three male partners.
The narrative is in raw rap style, cussing and snarling, and Franceschi's monologues are startlingly good. Whether she is inside the skin of a jerky 11-year-old, dealing with a rape attack with jaunty denial, evoking a hate-crazed misogynist or identifying with a sadistic ballet teacher, Franceschi is scarily in our faces.
But Holman, who tells most of the story, seems a million miles away from either world. Her sweet blue eyes are haunted neither by urban myths nor a dancer's masochism, and her theatrical manner makes much of the narrative sound like the fantasy of a middle-class girl.
She is not helped by the holes in the story. Why would an essentially middle-class mother let her daughter run so perilously wild? Why would such a street-smart kid hang around a man's apartment to be raped for a second time? Events are told so fast and so exclusively from Franceschi's viewpoint that they feel sensationalised, even indulgent.
The dancing doesn't fill in many gaps. Though it usefully illustrates certain moments (Franceschi jiving frenetically at the Grease audition or sweating through class), there are long passages of routine choreography that have no obvious relevance. Somewhere inside this production there is a good show, but Martin Sherman, credited as dramaturge, hasn't succeeded in prising it out.
· Until Sunday. Box office: 020-8692 2253.
