MIDNIGHT EXPRESS London Coliseum

A young American is caught smuggling drugs in Turkey in 1970 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Bill Hayes wrote an account of his ordeal which Alan Parker turned into an Oscar-winning film. Peter Schaufuss’s dance-drama was to have starred the 23-year-old Ukranian dancer, Sergei Poulinin, but he had walked out in the middle of rehearsals, less than a week before the opening. His understudy, Johan Christensen, had to step in. The drama does not have either the physical or psychological depth of the original. The brutality is too tame to be harrowing and the story line and the repetitive choreography is never sufficiently interesting.