Picasso at the Lapin Agile,
Elsinore Theatre Company

Old Fire Station, 07-11.05.02

The company that brought you The Vagina Monologues (Wadham's Moser Theatre, February) returns with a four-day run of this 1996 play by (the) Steve Martin, a bizarre cabaret of characters that had its first-night audience at the OFS screeching with hilarity.

The Nimble Rabbit was a cabaret and café in turn-of-the-century Paris, its name a corruption of "Le Lapin a Gill", the painting (rabbit in pot, above) which became the club's sign. Steve Martin plonks the anomalous young Einstein down amongst the colourful characters passing an evening in the real-life hangout of Picasso, Modigliani and other artists and bohemians, and then leads us through a playful pageant of frothily clever surrealism.

The acting throughout is of the high standard which audiences seem to be able to expect from Elsinore Theatre Company. Rizwan Ahmed's Gaston in particular shines like a beacon of good comic character acting (never have I seen a youngster play an oldster so convincingly); Jessie Burton's world-weary neo-romanticist Germaine is played with great maturity; Amyas Merivale portrays a nervous but razor-sharp Einstein to contrast with Ben Levine's arrogant and creepy Picasso. And Schmendiman…well, Schmendiman has to be seen to be believed!

A fascinating feature of the play is that neither of the nominally central characters is particularly likeable. Something is unpleasant about the incredible arrogance accompanying their belief that they are shamen of their parallel fields of art and science, involved in peeling back the fabric of the universe and trying to relate to others what they have seen beneath. Yet genius must be acknowledged. With hindsight, it appears fitting that the two men should have embraced and called each other "brother"; here the Hollywood-historical ending is supplied, and they do exactly that. But in one smooth move Martin introduces a surprise third historical giant to close the triangle, and in as clever and silly a way as you should by now be expecting, the rug is gloriously ripped from under the serious faux-philosophical speculations on the coming century and its grand significance.

I suspect that those who are already confirmed fans of Steve Martin's comedy acting will get the most out of this play - and also that this production gets most of what can be got from it.

There is no interval, but you won't notice.

Su Jordan, 08.05.02