How To Behave, Hampstead Theatre, London

It's one of life's immutable laws that productions chosen to open new theatres take second place to their surroundings in the inaugural reviews: full marks, then, to Hampstead Theatre for making a virtue of necessity and commissioning a work about the building itself. "The ultimate house-warming party" was how Hampstead's artistic director Jenny Topper had billed it, and as we were handed our lemons and limes – to be exchanged for headphones as we entered the sacred space – that was exactly how it felt.

Impelled by a bland voice reminiscent of those well-bred gents who once addressed the nation's tots on Listen with Mother – when radio was known as the wireless – we were sent on a tour through the bowels of the building, though to anyone who had seen generators and people sitting at computer terminals before, this was hardly new news. The voice was keen to ventilate grand concepts – "The thrill of the impossible, held in balance" – and to raise ontological questions – "Why are you here?" – and it fancied itself as humorous, though on that point its politely-puzzled hearers did not seem to agree.

Part two of Station House Opera's How to Behave took place in the auditorium, and consisted of a 40-minute sequence of physical high-jinks by seven actors plus a giant video screen. Its devisers, Julian Maynard Smith and Susannah Hart, were confident that unexpected disjunctions between reality and filmed representations of that reality would keep us on the edge of our seats with excitement. Led by the charismatic Mem Morrison, the performers acted their heads off, but since this was performance art, rather than fusty old "literary" theatre, they had to get by without jokes, plot, character, or anything else that might have engaged our minds. There were feeble echoes of Cocteau's sublime cinematic conjuring tricks, and wishy-washy attempts at emulating Robert Lepage, but the whole thing felt like a home video by a bunch of children with no idea what to do with their expensive gadgetry. If the audience hadn't been packed with kindly disposed luvvies, they would have been booed to the hi-tech rafters.

Enough column-miles have been expended on extolling this arresting building and its beautifully conceived auditorium; the architects responsible for the revamped but soulless Sadler's Wells should visit it, and hang their heads in shame. So let's count this lamentable evening an unfortunate aberration, and hope that the gleaming new Hampstead Theatre will recover the raison-d'être that animated the lovable old Portakabin it replaces, and once more purvey well-made plays.

Ends Friday (020-7722 9301)