Melmoth the Wanderer

Charles Maturin's picaresque gothic has been transformed into an equally rambling farce by Nicola McCartney. The epic tale of a Faustian lost soul is frantically assembled by a provincial church choir, with its gloomy conventions and sledgehammer morality swapped out for reams of squiffy puns and jabs at amateur dramatics.

A nameless narrator forces the story of Melmoth on a rabble of squawking choristers, and there's ample comedy in its deviation from their usual programme of placid psalms and comic opera. As they enact grim accounts of hapless mortals in their darkest hours, they're gradually dragged into the narrative of the Wanderer's tragic doomed love.

Melmoth the Wanderer maintains a consistently invigorating spirit of visual invention, with skeletal puppets creeping from wardrobes and an ingenious rotating torture table. There are also a few snappy one-liners and plenty of postmodern digs at the source material, but it's a fine line between frenetic and shrill, and the cast frequently lurch over it.

There's an obvious risk involved in satirising the incompetence of incompetent players, and where last year's Appointment with the Wicker Man pulled that off with aplomb, here things are just a little too ramshackle to sell the concept. Too much of the comedy derives from crap foreign accents, and any attempt at commenting on Maturin's ripe oddity is quickly submerged. It's far from the living hell that Melmoth himself was condemned to, but its wandering grows weary sooner than it should.