THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER Young Vic in Old Vic Tunnels

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s mariner, you will remember, was condemned, as the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman were, to walk the earth for ever and tell his story again and again. He callously shot an albatross, a bird of good omen, and brought down a curse on himself, the crew and the ship they were sailing in. Can Fiona Shaw and director Phyllida Lloyd repeat the success they had with TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and do justice to this haunting epic odyssey and psychological drama of guilt? Can they and dancer David Hay-Gordon (who plays many roles, including the albatross and Death) recreate the ghostly horror and the gigantic, awe-inspiring seascape in the spooky tunnels under Waterloo Station with only the aid of a huge tarpaulin and the trains rumbling overhead? The answer is yes and no. The virtuosity is incontestable but the performance does not have the visual impact of the engravings of Joseph Noel Paton and Gustav Doré nor the spectacular tour de force of Michael Bogdanov’s production for the Young Vic in 1980.