THEATRE / Heartless, ICA, London
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Your support makes all the difference.Simon Vincenzi, the motivating force behind this abstruse theatrical sketch, is best known as a designer. Sure enough, this looks intriguing, with dripping, glowing balloons hovering over six figures in a gloomy wasteland. But as with so much of the experimental work at the ICA, there's little intellectual or emotional depth beneath the artful veneer. Vincenzi throws images and references at the audience. But as director he has less to do with imposing a shape or purpose on the evening than the eerie music of Stephen Warbeck.
The minimal narrative begins with Peter Pan and ends with a series of vicious child murders. The connection between the two feels spurious - whatever darkness one reads into Peter Pan, it's hardly a pre-echo of the serial-killer - and their selection arbitrary. There's a man on stage with hooves, furry thighs and a peekabo basque, lip- synching badly to a song: perhaps he is the Devil, or perhaps the god Pan. While you're chasing such flimsy suppositions, Heartless slips through your fingers like wet sand.
To 9 Jan (071-930 3647)
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