A well-cut fable

In an age of over-production, theatrical pyrotechnics and, occasionally, just plain tack, Peter Brook's acclaimed production of a simple tale economically staged really does prove that less is more.

His version of Can Themba's tragi-comic, cautionary short story, The Suit - originally adapted for the stage by South African theatre legend Barney Simon and Mothobi Mutloatse - returns to the Young Vic after a sell-out there two years ago and a world tour.

It is no surprise that this tale of marital infidelity and revenge gone awry should earn Themba the reputation of South Africa's answer to Dylan Thomas (he drank himself to death in exile in 1967), for while it is set in the vibrantly bohemian Johannesburg quarter of Sophiatown in the 1950s, before it was flattened by the forces of apartheid, it has the air of a truly universal fable.

Storytelling and mime were a part of Sophiatown's rich fabric, and Brook takes his cue from this in evoking quite simply the minutiae of the everyday - the men's jostling camaraderie on the bus, the domestic ritual that proves so fateful. Props are minimal: a moving clothes rail becomes window and doors, a coat hanger is used as a phone.

So the specifically ordinary brings depth to devoted husband Philomel's humiliation of wife Matilda when he forces her to treat as a house guest the suit that her rapidly scarpering lover left behind.

Isaac Koundé's cuckold reveals torment as he speaks of women carrying dirty laundry reminding him of adulterously soiled sheets. As Matilda, the beautiful Sara Martins poignantly suggests the dissatisfaction of the former singer as she performs nightclub-style and flirts and shimmies with the offending garment when home alone - until she is given enough rope to hang herself. Praise, too, for Sotigui Kouyaté's raffish elder, Maphikela, with his trilby wobbling precariously on his dreadlocks.

That this is all performed in French (with English surtitles) by Brook's Paris-based Théâštre des Bouffes du Nord company matters little. Short (80 minutes), bittersweet and utterly captivating.

Until 13 September. Box office: 020 7928 6363.

Le Costume