Evening Standard (London): Russian roulette

HOPELESS GAMES * (GOOD) Riverside Studios

TEATR Do-Fabrik are a Russo-German alliance of clowning/physical theatre practitioners from St Petersburg and Potsdam with big ideas and musculature to match.

According to their programme notes, their work springs from "the liberationist effects resulting from the fall of totalitarianism" and "reflects humanity's increasing alienation from nature and our environment".

This, they say, has caused the loss of "everything we call 'tradition' - rites, rituals, cult beliefs, folklore". Their artistic response is therefore to work "not with props and scenery, but with sound and breathing". Their work is "an actual attempt to get back to purity".

In lieu of this ambition, the company offer a series of stark callisthenic vignettes dressed up in the modern clowning uniform of bowler hats, tatty dinner jackets and battered suitcases.

Routines include an impressive opening sequence with a "headless dame" waddling onto an empty stage, doubled-up inside an overcoat, as well as a "Kazak Ceilidh" - a sort of Cossack dance executed in white judo costumes.

All the while, a dissonant soundtrack crackles away as the company of five engage in Russian roulette and synchronised movement.

There are also doomy sequences from a "post-Apocalyptic" video featuring endless railway lines, depersonalised tower blocks and a barking dog.

How this illustrates the company's dystopian message may remain a mystery to those of us alienated by what the programme calls "the rising tide of psychic strain". But this is a vigorous and impressive spectacle to behold all the same - DV8 meets Laurel and Hardy.

* Until Saturday. Box office: 020 8237 1111.