Oscar Wilde's sly, subversive wit enlivens his plays, but when it came to writing fairytales for adults he reverted to Victorian morality and sentimentality. A century later, along come Key Productions to pile on the mawkishness and the sugar.
With its abundance of fairy lights and adult actors in pyjamas and fairy wings, I imagine that Max Key's production of four of the stories is intended to induce wide-eyed wonderment. It made me feel as if I'd just scoffed a pound and a half of crystallised violet creams.
Key is clearly aiming for a simple storytelling style, using decorated upturned buckets that offer stilts for the giant in The Selfish Giant and little flurries of snow and rose petals. But the adaptation stays firmly on the page: the production almost always tells before it shows, so that too much that occurs on stage happens after the event and feels unnecessary.
There are lots of pretty but irrelevant stage pictures. The Selfish Giant, The Nightingale and the Rose and The Happy Prince are just too self-conscious and mannered - but both Wilde and Key have more fun with The Remarkable Rocket, the story of an arrogant firework who thinks that he is the main event at the wedding of the prince and princess. There is more dialogue, more (dare I say it) drama, and the costumes are dead simple and dead clever.
Even the actors, relieved of having to play charming children or self-sacrificing birds, stop looking as if they were auditioning for Disney and start enjoying themselves. Otherwise, it is all sugar and not nearly enough spice.
· Until April 2. Box office: 020-7620 3494.
