When Michael Frayn is on form, his plays are hard to beat for intelligence and wit. But, every so often, he comes up with a clunker. Although the National's resources succeed in dressing up this homage to extravagant impresario Max Reinhardt (1873-1943), beneath its opulent, baroque surface (and despite a fine central performance from Roger Allam) it's hard to warm to the script's intellectual games.
Reinhardt wanted to break down the boundaries between life and art, and Frayn forces parallels between his situation as an Austrian Jew by integrating rhyming chunks of Everyman (the medieval morality play that he staged annually at Salzburg). But the production repeatedly hammers home the message without illuminating the characters and the result is dramatically underpowered.
Lyttelton at the National, South Bank, SE1 (020-7452 3000). Until August 30. £10-£14.
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