OUR own individual takes on reality are moulded by thoughts and feelings which flow from our subconscious.

Writer and director Katerina Curtis understands this and has developed a new form of theatre, the playfilm', to try and harness both the conscious action and the subconscious thought of her love triangle of characters.

Based on a true story, this dark comedy portrays an intense love affair between a naive Greek student, her hateful, charismatic Oxbridge professor, and the student's oversexed mother.

Set over the course of 20 years and played out on both screen and stage the production explores love, sex, madness, beauty, emotional blackmail and sperm donation.

In doing so it attempts to stretch the boundaries of emotional relationships - and of what defines a play and a film.

This does work in some respects as the combination of stage and screen allows the audience to see the intensity of the action in this provocative love story.

It allows the audience to view Bella's descent into madness from two different angles and also brings some kind of clarity about how perverted professor Charles is haunted by his sister's suicide.

She constantly plagues him through the subconscious and causes him to try to control and demean the women he shares the stage with.

Throughout the play there is the continuity and persistence of a love affair which damages both Bella and Charles.

They spend much of it physically apart but they are still subconsciously attached and seemingly unwilling to acknowledge the damage or get out of the affair.

This is all well-intentioned by Curtis but as the play progresses there is more interest in the novelty of the playfilm than the plot or characters.

It is possible to see how innocent Bella could be taken in by the charming and powerful Charles in her first weeks of university.

But the subconscious device of the screen is not effectively used to explain why she stays obsessed with him for so long or why she goes insane.

The insanity seems to come in great bursts as opposed to gradually, because time jumps forward in the action but the characters stay looking the same.

As her madness increases, the films get increasingly bizarre - but in a rather cavalier this is what it could be like' style.

It does not help that Helena Mitchell's Bella is blurred between evocatively heartfelt despair, as she talks about how the cockroaches have become her only true source of happiness, and what can only be described as childish tantrums.

Mother Yolanda (Karen McCaffrey) provides hatred for Bella, admiration and sex for Charles and much of the dark comedy in the love triangle.

Just as Charles tires of Bella, we tire of the intense love triangle long before the conclusion.

The playfilm is an interesting idea but by letting the audience see the action from two angles it also lets them see too much.

They see that the subject - self-destructive love for a Cambridge don - is nowhere near developed enough to be satisfying.

  • Cockroach Waltz, to November 26. Greenwich Playhouse, Greenwich High Road, tickets £11/£8 concs. Box office 020 8858 9256.