Exquisite Corpse is a light, colourful theatrical experiment from True Fiction Ltd, which could do with being a touch heavier and a shade darker. The play is a cluster of loosely connected scenes, written by a group of inventive and inquisitive Welsh writers, who were given a series of paintings for inspiration. The best scenes hover between life and death – all mystery, loneliness and despair. If only True Fiction had confined their play to this eerie twilight, but some heavy-handed comedy and clunky modern-day references (terrorism anyone?), cut through the gloom and let the audience off lightly.

The writers who get it right (Kit Lambert and Othniel Smith in particular) display real flair for sketching a world in an instant. It isn’t a place we recognise, but it still pulses with fears and feelings we understand. In one scene two teenagers scale a ladder and peer down at life below - what they see is death, destruction and an old man addled with agony. The show needs more scenes like this, which invoke abstract worlds, that all begin to ooze and blend together. The loose ends should start to tangle together and – in a manner similar to Kafka’s claustrophobic narrative maze – trap the audience in a real unknown.

But for all its imagination this company seems reluctant to relinquish the real. The comic elements are particularly disruptive – too shiny and tangible to fit into this otherwise blurred world. And although Alex Beckett carves out his comedy characters with skilled precision, his sharply defined comedy cameos are more suited to BBC3 than the Southwark stage.

There is a slightly too much breathing space here: some easy laughs and over-familiar scenarios allow the audience up for air, just when the company should be pushing us under. So whilst I was hoping to be plunged head-first into a consuming, crushing fantasy, this show is only testing the waters.

Till 30 May 2009