Jungle fever

The David Glass Ensemble is not the first attempt to dramatise Paul Theroux's dark novel linking madness and rites of passage in an exotic Central American setting. Like most psychological stories wrapped in a flowing theme of colonial exploitation, The Mosquito Coast is ripe for contemporary interpretations. It would be difficult to imagine Harrison Ford's film version of the protagonist stumbling convincingly into David Glass's carefully constructed theatrical nightmare. Here the lush and sweaty atmosphere is created through bodies and light rather than selective camera angles and clever editing. Glass is a veteran mime artist, director, and impresario, who has been instrumental in bringing European physical theatre techniques to Britain since the mid 1970s. His Mosquito Coast, adapted by John Constable, is a mixture of African, indigenous Indian and Spanish musics and soundscapes, shamanistic rituals within primitive settings, and physicality which draws on animal movement and the Brazilian martial art/proto-breakdance called capoeira. Faced with such a heady concoction of nature and culture, it is no wonder that American dreams of Utopian "civilisation" are doomed to failure, dragging the dreamers with them into the mire.

The Mosquito Coast, 28 March-22 April at The Young Vic Theatre, The Cut SE1 (071-928 6363)