Time Out says: ****

Andrzej Lukowski, Times Out London

The aesthetic sensibilities of Polish director Grzegorz Jarzyna distinctly recall the European cinema auteurs of the '60s and '70s, so it's fitting that this latest play - performed by his TR Warszawa company - is based upon a film of that vintage: Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 “Teorema”.
Events take place in a wealthy household, presided over by authoritarian patriarch Paolo (Jan Englert).
Its arid calm is disturbed when the Christ-like Guest (Sebastian Pawlak) inexplicably takes up residence then methodically seduces the entire family, one by one. They feel liberated, yet when the Guest vanishes, their lives swiftly disintegrate. As with the film, there is little talking, yet while Pasolini was clearly offering an acerbic treatise on bourgeois morality and the absence of God, Jarzyna's version feels less politicised and more sensual,moreconcerned with the seductions than their aftermath.
At any rate, it's T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T.'s eerily ravishing atmosphere that really engages. A parched white carpet covers the stage, its huge spread distorted by tricks of light and mirrors, creating the impression of a boundless indoor desert. The denizens of the house wander about it like pastel-clad automata, fearful of Paolo's displeasure, until the Guest's creeping eroticism taints the once sterile realm.
Jacek Grudzien and Piotr Dominski's electro/jazz score provide sinister accompaniment to the play's slow, foreboding drift of images, but there's humour here too, right from the sly use of audience plants in the very first scene. T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T is much less dynamic than the company's recent version of Sarah Kane's '4.48 Psychosis', but its weighty expanse is hugely compelling, the type of heady European stuff we need the Barbican for.