Devised theatre can induce an exhilarating feeling of dramatic freedom, or lead to a depressing sense of narrative chaos. When it works, you want to call for the exile of all but the most experimental playwrights. When it doesn't, you long for some fourth-wall realist to come and sort it out.
Unlimited Theatre's director, Jon Spooner, states that his company's latest show is a love story conceived as an antithesis to the sloppy commercialism of Love Actually and Notting Hill. "Richard Curtis can suck our fat ones," he writes in a programme note.
This fit of pique seems peculiar given that the central scenario involves a young couple snuggled up in an abandoned lighthouse, which has a cosily Curtis-like feel about it, especially when the pair moonily enumerate their romantic landmarksand attempt to ascribe each year with a particular colour.
This domestic idyll is interrupted when a pale extra-terrestrial washes up on the beach and exerts a wierd erotic pull over both of them. Their crumbling relationship is counterpointed with the struggles of the local museum curator, trying to prevent her curios from tumbling over a cliff; while, suspended above, a DJ slumps in his booth, broadcasting missing persons bulletins around the clock.
As with all of Unlimited's best work, this strange seaside montage has an elusive, emotional logic to it. You cannot help but feel, however, that Theron U Schmidt's seraphic performance as the Stranger is the show's most successful element because he is entirely mute. While the imagery can be heavenly, the dialogue trails lumpenly in its wake, and you long for an assertive voice to bind it together.
Elizabeth Besbrode is good as the flustered curator, but her plight illustrates Unlimited's dilemma - if you work on the edge for too long you may fall off.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0113-213 7700. Then touring.
