When the smoothly villainous Sheriff of Nottingham (Scott Brooksbank) tells us he can't stand violence, we suspect that he has about as much respect for the truth as for the well-being of the people labouring under his corrupt rule. Later, as he swashes a buckle to match any of the Sherwood Forest freedom fighters, he reiterates his point: "I hate violence but it doesn't mean I am not good at it."

So, Creation Theatre Company's new take on the legend of Robin Hood certainly has its comic moments and its fights, even if not quite enough to satisfy the blood lust of the eight-year-old I was talking to in the interval. And that was after the sheriff's witch of a sidekick, Lady Gisburne (Eleanor Montgomery), had performed the grisly operation of plucking out a torture victim's heart in full view of the audience. Truly, there is no satisfying the young.

Nor, on this occasion, all of the old either. For here is one grumpy critic left bemused and rather disappointed by a production whose construction appears to have been based on the guiding principle that if you're in doubt, throw it in anyway. Thus we get the aforementioned comedy and exactly as you might expect the acts of derring-do with swords, staffs, and bows and arrows. But on top of these comes the curious addition of mystery and magic, with the mythical figure of the Green Man (Richard Evans) wandering about the forest and some bizarre conjurings up of the Dark Forces in nature as the play moves towards its baffling and not unwelcome end.

There is also from a company usually noted for its direct and unfussy approach a marked pretentiousness about this piece, which has been written by one of its former actors, Darren Ormandy. He chooses to frame the story in lots of supposedly comic business arising from the antics of the acting group who are purported to be telling it. He even risks a dramatic production (for some reason, dealing with another legendary figure, King Arthur) in the manner of the Pyramus and Thisbe play from A Midsummer Night's Dream. This serves to underline that he lacks Shakespeare's comic gift. Besides, this stuff is too self-referencing. The actor's life may be the most interesting thing in the world to Mr Ormandy, but telling us about it tends to reinforce what some of us feel about the "look-at-me" nature of the profession.

So please would director Adam Meggido get out a pair of scissors to match the size of the monster Excalibur wielded by the 'comic' thesps and cut, cut, cut. There would be left much to delight in including Jon Boden's (under-rehearsed) songs, a nicely self-deprecating hero in Tom Peters's Robin, a toughnut Maid Marion (Jennifer Matter) who is as far as can be from the soppy heroine of old and a hulking Little John (Martin Pirongs) who could be said to define what it is to have an 'attitude problem'. And we'd also all be on our way long before the present 10.50pm 'curtain' . . .