Mannequins of madness

A fevered claustrophobia saturates the strange solo show of puppeteer Nicole Mossoux. She performs on an inky stage and is draped in brown robes that somehow suggest a static, medieval world. The mood is like a mad, muddy fairy tale, where you think you see a Sleeping Beauty molested, and then Dorothy's red shoes dance a queasy cancan.

It opens with Mossoux writing at a lectern, a life-size puppet at her side. It's not clear if he's a teacher or some mutant muse, but he feels more saboteur than study coach.

The mood becomes increasingly macabre as the puppet goads and taunts and then pulls a knife and cuts off her head, a visual trick Mossoux achieves with clever flicks of her cloak.

The show proceeds thus, with scenes of mounting menace. In one, she lays a puppet very like herself onto a tomb and then dances with it; in another, she literally disappears into a man who has raped her. Indeed, given that all the mannequins look like cadavers, Twin Houses might be read as a dance of death.

Being super-serious Belgians, Mossoux and director Patrick Bonté might also be asking questions about identity and autonomy.

Mossoux constantly tries to shake off her mannequins, particularly the one like her, only she never quite manages. You half wonder if they're an over-close family whose domination she colludes with, and then you wonder just who's dominating who.

Mossoux is a succinct and committed performer, although she does make the same point several times and there's much about her that's dusty and dated. Moreover, parts of the show are so unrelentingly macabre that diminishing returns set in. That said, her blank-faced passivity is genuinely unsettling.

Until 17 Jan. Information 08703 800 400. LIMF runs until 29 January.

28th London International Mime Festival: Twin Houses