Slow boat from china in crossing the sea

Crossing the Sea is a mixed-media monodrama on a Chinese (but also universal) theme by Deirdre Gribbin. For the libretto of what is in effect an opera-ballet, Gribbin has devised a text from translations of Tang dynasty poetry. The story is affecting enough, if you've read the synopsis in the programme; a woman longs for her soldier lover to return; he writes letters from some distant war but shows no inclination to come home. As death approaches, she resigns herself to solitude.

It's a big ask, expecting one singer to deliver all the words in an hour-long piece, and while Alison Wells gives a performance of the utmost commitment, the timbre of her rather plummy mezzo-soprano eventually becomes wearing. Nor does she manage to make enough of the words count, and what text does come across feels stilted, as if we are indeed listening to a translation.

Gribbin's "orchestra" is the Smith Quartet and she has provided them with an atmospheric underlay of string sound, sometimes evocatively oriental in tone, at other times stabbingly direct. Yet even here the unvarying tempo undermines the storytelling.

Not all of the drama is musical: throughout her ordeal, the woman is accompanied by two veiled and blackclad dancers (Amy Bell and Valentina Golfieri, who also provide the choreography). The production's most magical moments find them serving as vessels to carry her, in her imagination at least, back to her lover.

The director, Lou Stein, has also called on the services of film-makers Hazuan Hashim and Phil Maxwell, whose images provide a striking, semi-abstract counterpoint to the onstage action. The ambition is laudable but sometimes the different media, rather than mixing, simply get in each other's way.

Tonight and Saturday (020 7702 2789)

Crossing the Sea
Wilton's Music Hall