The Golden Ass

Shakespeare is a hard act to follow, but with The Golden Ass, a new work specially written to complement the Globe's ongoing Bard cycle, Peter Oswald shows no lack of ambition in trying to fulfil his appointed task. An intimate chamber drama would hardly be appropriate for Southwark's reconstructed "wooden O", so Oswald has opted to create a pageant of epic Elizabethan proportions based on a Latin source used by Shakespeare himself.

Described by CS Lewis as "a strange compound of picaresque novel, horror comic, mystagogue's tract, pornography and stylistic experiment", Apuleius's second century tale relates the adventures of Lucius, "a man addicted to all curiosities", who leaves his native Athens and ventures up country to Hypata in search of wisdom. Alas, when he tries to acquire the magic powers of the local witch, Pamphale, he accidentally transforms himself into an ass and is abducted by bloodthirsty bandits. This is only the beginning of his woes.

Oswald's version is a piece of madcap variety entertainment in which Hypata is turned into a 19th century Royston Vasey peopled by strange northern hill folk. Pearly kings, pirates, cross-dressers and ice-cream sellers sing, dance, chase, shoot and trepan one another, as the metamorphosed hero (played by Mark Rylance, on top form), pulling a wheelbarrow and with a huge mallet swinging suggestively between his thighs, labours to regain human form. At times, this postmodernist scattershot sampling of styles works remarkably well. The lengthy inset tale of Cupid and Psyche, narrated by a Widow Twankey figure with the assistance of puppets, opera singers and several outsize Olympian hands that descend from the sky, is improbably beguiling.

Occasionally, however, the bedlamish zaniness palls and one hankers for a little more emotional and intellectual weight. As a form, the animal fable is ripe for renegotiation in light of our culture's new sense of animal rights. In his desire to deliver a piece of rollicking family entertainment, Oswald passes up the opportunity to address such contemporary issues. Anyone going to the Globe expecting a 21st century successor to Hamlet will be disappointed; anyone hoping for a little top-quality pantomime will not.

? Showing at Shakespeare's Globe, in repertory until 29 September. Box office: 020 7401 9919.