In need of a transfusion

You're an actor - how do you respond to harsh criticism? You can see a shrink, sink into drink - or you can invite your critics to a disused Victorian theatre and bump them off one by one.

That's the gleefully gruesome set-up of Improbable Theatre's play, adapted from the 1973 British horror film of the same name. Outmoded actor-manager Edward Lionheart (Jim Broadbent) stages his greatest ever production by devising seven grisly demises for the hacks who hobbled his West End season.

There are glorious moments - the woman from The Observer (Sally Dexter) gets fried alive under a hair station in a grim parody of Joan of Arc's death from Henry VI Part One; the sleazeball from the Standard (Steve Steen) gets a pound of flesh torn from his twitching torso by Lionheart's ludicrous Shylock.

There are some cherishable turns, too, particularly Bette Bourne as the poodle-wielding Sunday Times critic and Rachael Stirling as Lionheart's daughter Miranda. But Broadbent, an actor incapable of being less than interesting, is subdued by the sheer quantity of Shakespeare he has to spout.

This should have been a 90-minute frolic: instead, it's a weighty two hours-plus: not quite parody but not something with any emotional content, either.

Somewhere between screen and stage, director Phelim McDermott and his co-adapter Lee Simpson have fallen hopelessly in love with the material. Their passion pays off in the grotesque wit of the staging.

But their controlling idea - that Lionheart, though deranged, is right to rail against the Oxbridge mafia's taming of theatre's wild instincts - is too inward-looking to sustain this show beyond its fabulous set-pieces.

In rep until Aug 27 (next perf Fri), National Theatre, South Bank SE1, 7.30pm, mats 2.15pm, £10 to £36. Tel: 020 7452 3000. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk. Tube: Waterloo/Embankment

Theatre Of Blood