Marianne Dreams - TNT

Like many stories written for youngsters, Moira Buffini's adaptation of Catherine Storr's 1958 novel has a disturbing darkness about it. And there's also the discomfiting hint of the possibility of child mortality as Marianne contracts a severe viral illness on her 10th birthday. Confined to her bed for many long weeks, she passes the time drawing with an old pencil unearthed by her mother.But what she draws in her waking hours becomes the subject of her feverish dreams and, in sleep, she returns again and again to the roughly sketched house where she befriends partially paralysed Mark and is pursued by menacing stones endowed with eyes. There are lighter moments, too, when she dances round her bed like a ballerina in pyjamas, but Freud would have a field day interpreting the manifestations of her vivid imagination as nightmarish episodes overlap with reality. Yet despite the computer-generated graphics and a storyline which holds the attention, director and choreographer Will Tuckett's production lacks that elusive dusting of magic which distinguishes the very best of children's theatre.
Almeida, Almeida St, N1 (020-7359 4404). Until January 26. £29.50- £6