Theatre: The alliance of Bottom and Piss

Leonce and Lena Gate Theatre, London

And so the Gate's Georg Buchner trilogy ends not with a bang, but with a sort of smile. The closing "number" in David Farr's musical adaptation of Buchner's wintry comedy has the grotesque courtiers of the kingdom of Bottom exiting with a kindergarten-philosopher refrain: "Are we sure we are sure we are really sure we cannot explain what has just happened?"

What has just happened is the marriage of Leonce (prince of Bottom) to Lena (princess of Piss), an act unintelligible to a caricatured ruling elite in thrall to heart-numbing rationalism. But it's not much easier to understand even if you're just a humble spectator: is this pseudo-fairytale union between two absurdly disenchanted souls a cause for celebration or cynicism, or something in between?

Even more so than Woyzeck (with which it was written in tandem in 1836 - the year before Buchner died), Leonce and Lena is a fragmented, textually corrupted, and stylistically disruptive beast. Although ostensibly helping to plug some of the play's gaps, Farr's decision to slot jaunty tunes in Lee (Spoonface Steinberg) Hall's youthful, slangy version, elaborating the moods of various scenes, often serves to emphasise its ambiguous tonal qualities. The music - for piano, trumpet and clarinet - has been conceived in the inter-textual spirit of the piece and sidles along in a pastiche Weill frame of mind. The effect is to heighten the alienating distance between character and utterance, a move that initially works well. Christopher Staines's superbly insouciant Leonce, a man who sees all human activity as a fruitless battle against boredom - and is bored by his own cogitative company - pirouettes half-heartedly on the mock-miniature theatre-stage, wailing "I'm destined to be me".

It's harder to know how to respond, though, when he teams up with his workshy, cockney drinking-companion Valerio (Tom Fisher) for a Gene-Kelly- meets-Eric-Morecambe sing-song on the road through Italy. Reversing life- roles, it is Leonce who seems suddenly charmed by life and Valerio who complains. Where there might be a gust of warmth, the all-pervading knowingness drops Leonce's chill wind of self-consciousness a further few degrees. Combined with his morbid duet with Sarah Theresa Belcher's elegant Lena ("Why is the way so long?"), we have the makings of the most morose, and sexless, love story in musical history. This may be the point - the fragile flower of feeling is doomed by society or even nature itself - but when the surrounding scenes range from semi-earnest discussions about life to hapless satirical echoes of Marx Brothers buffoonery, the evening risks a similarly deadening uniformity. Whom should we laugh at? The compromise is a consensus grin.

In the final scene, the new king Leonce advises the audience in clipped Windsor tones that tomorrow "the whole farce" will be repeated. No doubt with a production this ambitious, time - whether measured by Leonce's utopian "flower-clocks" or by more prosaic mechanisms - is a factor. With more performances and further attunement to Buchner's Hessian sense of humour, what should be the crowning glory to a fine season may at least be lifted from the status of worthy revival.

To 20 Dec, Gate Theatre, 11 Pembridge Road, London W11 (0171-229 5387)