Three nice blokes all being really lovely seems to be the flimsy guiding principle behind this amusing but self-indulgent new show from Improbable Theatre.
Some of the company were also involved in devising Shock-headed Peter at the Piccadilly Theatre. But here in Sloane Square, instead of chilling and gripping with spooky imagery, the company draw on an image of caring sensitive men larking about like Nick Hornby on an afternoon off.
But far from being a coherent challenging new work, it's a rambling divertissement starting with improv and turning into a fairy tale about three brothers in a bakery - one of whom is conscripted into the army. It ruminates on the nastiness of war, touches briefly on the death of fathers and finally resorts to wistful reminiscence.
Under Julian Crouch and Arlene Audergon's direction, actors Guy Dartnell, Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson are all technically sound. They recreate battle scenes with headless puppets and maintain a consistent level of aphoristic repartee. But the finest moment is when one is killed and a second manipulates his corpse to intimidate the third. This is a darkly hilarious sequence that unleashes the unpleasantness that might have rescued the show from being an agreeable but anodyne night out.
There is evidence of the performance having greater meaning with its steeply raked timber platform that operates as a stage, a bunker and a bed - complete with trapdoors, sandbags and a sheet. Illuminated by colourful effects and built up with cardboard houses, the stage is ingeniously brought to life by the company's quirky imagination. They suggest that the whole thing is a kind of dreamscape which, like the title, refers to another dimension. But still it fails to move. Dartnell, Simpson and McDermott toy with the audience, efface their own endeavour and crack in-jokes about the illusory nature of their loveable capering. But this only disavows an already frivolous experience. It's therefore too easy to dismiss a technically proficient but inconsequential show about bread makers as mere master baking. If the three of them weren't so thoroughly nice, it wouldn't be so forgivable.
Spirit
