Weird and vengeful

Theatre: Reverence; The Emperor Jones

And off he races into the jungle wearing his white naval uniform with gold epaulettes and dancing tassles, presumably for camouflage. He immediately loses his way, though earlier he stressed that he knew the terrain intimately. As darkness descends he is haunted by the ghosts of his victims. The story gets stuck here and turns into a series of flashbacks, nightmares and choreographed interludes, like an X-rated pageant. The dances are energetic and spectacular, sure, and the thumping drums certainly jangle the nerves, but so does a road drill sufficiently amplified. A pit. The script promised to be a searching and thorough examination of criminal megalomania but it veers off into flashy claptrap and wastes its prime asset, Jones, who is reduced from a fascinatingly eloquent narcissist to a shrieking loon, a mere noise in the dark.

Paterson Joseph, in the lead, gives a captivating account of high-camp malice. A star turn, nearly worth the ticket price alone but the choppy, truncated script lets him down. This production began life on the fringe, and to justify its presence at the Olivier there are 39 extras (yup, 39, I counted them, there was nothing else to do) who come on stage, mooch about a bit and exit. Costly add-ons like that don’t disguise the play’s narrow range, they underline it.