Catch the pidgin

Like Terry Gilliam's film of the same name, Ronan O'Donnell's monologue features one man against the system in a dystopian future whose inhabitants can no more snatch a break to somewhere sunny than they can sprout wings.

In a yarn that offers a Clockwork Orangey rejig of Trainspotting jargon, our man Doddy is out trying to nick some Marmite for his mum while war rages between Europe and America. But his low-key local misadventures are topped by the appearance of a super-deadly US warcraft...

O'Donnell's previous play The Chic Nerds, which debuted at Edinburgh's Traverse theatre, was a lot of shouting about not very much. This new effort may or may not be any better: Doddy's thick Scottish brogue makes this a challenging 55 minutes for Sassenachs.

Graeme Maley's production is surefooted, breaking up the talk with bursts of sound and atmospheric lighting. And Antony Strachan offers a performance of wonderful verve as Doddy. He's easy to watch, if not to understand.

But does Brazil really belong on the stage when it feels more like a short story than a drama? And does it really have anything to say about the war on terror, as the publicity suggests? In both cases I suspect not, but can't claim to have caught all the evidence.

Until Mar 2, Latchmere Theatre, Latchmere Pub, 503 Battersea Park Road SW11, Tue to Sat 8pm, Sun 5pm, £8, £6 concs, Tue Pay What You Can. Tel: 020 7978 7040. Rail: Clapham Junction

Brazil