PIGTALES

Bristol New Vic

Bella, a young woman living in Paris, is delighted when she lands a new job as a massage therapist at up-market beauty salon Perfumes Plus. She is surprisingly unperturbed when she discovers that the 'Plus' which she is expected to provide is what telephone box advertisements describe as 'tension relief'. But she soon finds that she is undergoing strange changes: a hairy back, a penchant for acorns, an excessive BO problem. Bella gradually shifts from gamine to gammon as she is transmogrified into a pig. Dismissed from her job, she takes to the streets and finds herself drawn into a flurry of strange adventures which revolve around her porcine condition. There is an encounter with Edgar, a Joerg Haider-like politician who thinks that the homeless are 'pigs' and uses her in his election campaign to illustrate his point. There is an affair with a werewolf who thrives on home-delivered pizza by eating the delivery boys. And in the end, there is self-realisation as Bella moves to the country and gives full vent to her animal instincts.

Pigtales is an adaptation of French novelist Marie Darrieussecq's best-selling novella of the same title. By following the book's structure, the piece loses touch with the essential dramatic requirements of theatrical rhythm and flow. It also highlights the flaws contained within the tale. It is not until mid-way through the second half that it becomes clear that this transformation is not a Kafkaesque metamorphosis moving irresistibly towards the porcine, but is bacon-flavoured lycanthropy, a flickering alternation between human and pig. Like H.F. Saint's Memoirs of an Invisible Man and many other stories which set out to explore the nature of altered human states, Pigtales fails to examine the implications of having two souls housed within one breast, opting instead for the old routine of flight and pursuit, hiding in sewers and being examined by strange scientists. Nor is any use made of the ample opportunities for social commentary and metaphor. Instead the plot revels in the seediness of the brothel and rushes breathlessly through Bella's trials and tribulations. The episodic structure lacks any sense of climax or revelation, and the result is a play which could just as easily be entitled "Adventures of a Were-Pig".

The production is awash with talent. Staged on an intricate multi-functional set, the acting is heavily non-naturalistic, and director Julia Smith is extremely successful in using a melange of tightly choreographed mine and heightened caricature, as if Jacques Tati were doing a season of Weimar cabaret. Whilst Marcia Carr plays Bella with unfaltering effervescence, depicting her pigginess by gesture alone, all other parts are taken by three male actors, who portray everything from masseuses to birds with remarkable versatility. As with so many literary adaptations, the quality of the production seems wasted on a story which was best left between hard covers. Doesn't anyone do proper plays any more?

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE

Until 1 April (0117 987 7877), and then on tour nationwide

Note to sub: it is correct that the male actors play masseuses, and not masseurs.