The 2006 season of festive family entertainment kicks off, not with the boos and whistles of pantomime, but the burrows and whiskers of Richard Adams's much-loved book. Yet, oh my fur and facial features, where is the actors' all-important distinguishing rabbitiness? A few woolly bobble hats do not adequate bunnification make.

"What's happening?" asked the sparky 11-year-old sitting next to me at one particularly confusing moment of Rona Munro's frustratingly impressionistic adaptation. It's something many will have been wondering at the start, as the running, tumbling, trampolining ensemble charge about like headless bunnies.

There's a warren in danger, procreation in jeopardy, but so frantic are the opening exchanges that no sure sense of scene and, crucially, character are established. Without this, it's impossible to respond to Adams's hard-hitting message of constant peril.

All of which is a particular shame, as great things were expected of director/designer Melly Still, who worked such wonders with Coram Boy at the National last year. For too long, Still relies on fleeting moments of individual beauty: a bouncy space hopper of a lettuce, a hula hoop representing a rabbit hole, a bird's eye view of the land comprising model railway and miniature houses.

Yet gradually, belatedly, the woes of the warring warrens come into sharp, shocking focus. Barry Aird makes a chilling SS-style General Woundwort, determined to crush the want-away instincts of Helena Lymbery and Victoria Moseley's fine, cowering does, appropriately got up like leftovers from the home front in the Second World War.

The stylish kung-fu kicks of the nine actors land harder as the stakes go ever higher within the circular, grass-covered playing area. In this animal kingdom, a world away from cloying Disneyfied anthropomorphism, Still reminds us that "Don't worry" is entirely the wrong message.

Until 23 January (08700 500 511, www.lyric.co.uk).