Titter-free parade of whimsy

The Warehouse's Christmas show is a misconceived hotchpotch which manages to turn promising comic material into a titter-free parade of whimsy.

Writer-director Janey Clarke took on a heavy burden in adapting Woody Allen's short stories for the stage. They do not make natural theatre. Thus we encounter a detective hired by a metaphysics student to discover God, and a ring of call-girls prepared to offer all the thrills of intellectual dating - "For fifty, I'll lend you my Bartok records and fake an anxiety attack."

All this already requires a degree of mental flexibility more natural to a reader than an audience, for which Clarke makes no allowances. She is happy to render the stories as monologues or in dialogue robotically re-transcribed. Her effort instead has gone into writing a suite of inexplicably earnest jazz songs to fit between the sketches.

Not only do these numbers have no bearing on the stories, they also require the actors to sing and play instruments, and Clarke has picked her cast accordingly. But comedy, too, is a special skill, and watching these decent musicians mug through Allen's subtle humour as if they've recently taken classes in how to be funny is excruciating.

Until 19 Feb. Information: 020 8680 4060.

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