THEATRE / A cure for all ills: Jeffrey Wainwright reviews The Baltimore Waltz

PAULA VOGEL's The Baltimore Waltz - here receiving its European premiere in Andrew Manley's enterprising production - is about Aids.

You know that almost as soon as you walk through the beautiful Harrogate Theatre and see Julie Henry's stark medical set - ward curtains, waiting room table and chairs - and, later, when you see a tense young woman in a belted raincoat pacing to and fro and a doctor looking grave. If things are starting to look a tad predictable by the time you meet Carl - as he is being summarily dismissed from his teaching post at the San Francisco Public Library for corrupting minors by having them cut out pink paper triangles and singing a mildly rude song - then you will be in for a pleasurable evening of disappointed expectations.

Consultation with the doctor looking grave reveals that it is not Carl but his sister, Anna, an elementary school teacher, who is ill. She is suffering from ATD - Acquired Toilet Disease - a terminal condition caught 'like mother always said you could' from toilet seats, most likely one she has shared with her young charges. Early on some amusing satirical play is made with this allegory including outraged complaint about official indifference and lack of research: 'But if some Bush (sic transit) grandchild got this thing that would be the last we'd hear of the space programme]'

Anna and Carl then set out for Europe on a journey that is both valedictory to each other and a quest for a mythical cure from a Viennese doctor. Especially at the beginning, there is an attractive surreal dislocation to this as the pair swing through a series of stereotypical postcards of France, Holland and Germany. The stability of what we are watching is also intriguingly uncertain. Behind the ward curtains is a huge, old-fashioned hotel bed, as substantial an emblem of Paris as the Eiffel Tower and one not wholly unconnected. Here, in a single-minded attempt to make up for lost time in and around elementary school, Anna beds a series of waiters and bellhops. Meanwhile Carl is eager to see the sights but when we see his slides it becomes apparent that they are of Baltimore. You see, you would have done better not to know from the start that this is all a fantasy, a promised journey never undertaken.

The action in these stopovers becomes repetitive and could be tedious without the chameleon wit of Vincent Franklin's impersonations of Anna's various Lotharios. He can be the funny galumphing Dutch boy or Harry Lime as required. An actor so sharp, energetic and versatile must be an asset to any repertory company. As Anna, who is either stoical and taut, or fleet-footedly lustful and taut, Sara Markland gives a focused, committed and convincing performance.

A distinct weakness in the play is that the conceit of inverting the roles of victim and mourner has resulted in leaving Carl with little to do or be for most of the play's middle section. Damien Goodwin is an immediately engaging young actor and copes as well as possible with this marking time. On either side, as the benignly subversive gay and in the play's final action, he shows considerable promise.

It is in this climax that the play best fulfils its impulse to combine fantasy and elegy. The bed is a hospital trolley and the corpse upon it is Carl as an Austrian Hussar. Painfully, Anna levers his wonderfully dead, stiff form upright and they waltz, first slowly then manically round the stage in Jenny Kagan's wounded, lilac light. The play's devices are often too obvious, but this provides a powerful conclusion to an interesting and welcome production.

Runs until 13 March, box office 0423 502116