"Size or length are not the point. All that matters is the quality of the experience," the Young Vic's director David Lan writes in the programme for Generations.

Such a warning justification is necessary. This oblique, metaphoric lament for the death and devastation wrought by Aids in Africa, voiced by seven terrific actors and a heartfelt, 13-strong choir singing in reactive, antiphonal sympathy, lasts just 30 minutes.

Anyone without a programme or who fails to hear two glancing references to "this big dying thing" could be forgiven for not realising the true subject of Generations.

A central playing area becomes a kitchen. Food is being cooked. The audience, uncomfortably seated on crates, sit all round. Author Debbie Tucker Green, whose odd vanity and affectation it is to ask that no capital letters be used in printing her name, neither mentions the word HIV nor discusses the virus.

In five scenes, three generations jovially banter and bicker over who taught the women to cook.

Their words are varied and repeated like incantations throughout the action. At intervals a family member is "called" and departs the stage, until just Nomlhe Nkonyeni's stoic, flinty grandmother and Louis Mahoney's grizzled grandfather remain. The choir sighs in beautiful dirge-like lamentation.

Sacha Wares's misbegotten though beautifully acted production fails to ritualise or emphasise the deathly significance of these departures. It concentrates upon meal-cooking domesticity, an activity unasked for in the text, thereby diluting the tragic essence.

• Until 10 March. Information: 020 7922 2922.