Sex, rape, violence, nakedness: they are all here in Ronnie Burkett's bewildering new piece but it's one of the production's many faults that such provocative material should be rendered so dull.
Burkett is known as one of the world's greatest puppeteers but it's hard to see why: his marionettes are inert, lack character and never pull off that essential trick of deceiving the audience that they contain something human.
This is partly because Burkett is the dominant performer, providing the voices for his puppets but also performing alongside them, almost as though they were the props in his personal story.
This intimate blurring of roles is frequently uncomfortable - at one point he acts out raping one of them; his delivery is convoluted and sometimes hysterical.
The narrative is about a plain little Canadian girl, Pity Bean, in Vienna to discover the truth about a painting, featuring a naked boy tied to a tree, which she has always considered the epitome of ideal beauty.
In fact, it's a painting born of savage violence and pain, a story Burkett relishes telling with such intensity it borders on the offensive.
Heavy with meditation on representation, the male gaze, the politics of desire and the female body, the story is interesting enough but the script is dire, overwrought and shot through with a cloying sentimentality.
Burkett has lost all notion of performance in this piece and, at two hours five minutes, it's an hour too long.
Until May 15, Barbican, Silk Street EC2, Mon to Sat 7.45pm, £15. Tel: 0845 120 7527. Tube: Barbican/Moorgate
