‘Elephant’ is a stunningly inventive show and the only disappointment is that its run at Greenwich Theatre is limited to five days. It’s difficult to come up with a simple word that sums up its style as it combines dance, theatre, puppetry, music, Commedia dell’Arte and ritual in a joyous telling of the life story of an African chief This collage of styles and images is amazingly coherent, and thoroughly engrossing.

The production is a hybrid of South African and European influences. This can be most clearly seen in the contrasting performances by Pady O’Connor, as the Devil, and by Zamuxolo Mgoduka as the Chief’s Brother. O’Connor has the physicality of the Devil himself, hissing and sliding his way around the words and the stage, incorporating into his performance a very European style of physical expression. The Devil has all the best lines and he brilliantly uses his hat to emphasise his words and create an extension of his own slippery personality. Contrasting with this, Mgoduka’s movement and speech is rooted in South African dance and language, he often slips into a regional language. The powerfully physical nature of his performance, his feet constantly pounding the earth, emphasise his connection with the land and his ancestors.

The show is supported by exciting music played by a single musician, occasionally enhanced by the cast when the score demands it. An array of percussion instruments provide haunting echoes of the African plains during the darkest and most moving scenes, whilst drumming and singing drive forward the dance sequences with huge energy and enthusiasm.

When the elephants (and it’s no secret that they appear in the play) lumber onto stage the audience has its breath taken away. ‘War Horse’ hasn’t got a monopoly on stunning puppets from South Africa, and for sheer impact the elephants knock Joey the horse and his friends into a cocked hat. They are impressive not only because of their extraordinary visual presence and beautiful movement – the mother elephant taking the baby one under her trunk for protection is a highly emotionally charged moment – but also because they are lit so wonderfully. Sometimes they appear as in a dream behind a gauze, and at other times in shafts of light that mimic the shade of trees in the African bush.

Whilst the play has a strong and compelling narrative, containing many comic and emotional moments, there is a very forceful message. The colonisation of Africa, as visualized by two actors in ragged uniforms selling guns to the tribesmen, is at the root of the modern disjoint conflict between man and nature. It is, ultimately, the reason why at the start of the story our narrator, Chief Zanenvula, cannot take his rightful place in heaven.

This show has been created with real love, and every member of the ensemble contributes to a highly successful evening. Even the programme, rich with photographs and text, is the best value I’ve come across for some time. If it were the West End it would be a souvenir edition sold for £10; here it’s a modest £3. The collaboration between South Africa’s Market Theatre and Newcastle’s Dodgy Clutch Theatre Company is enormously rewarding. The show has, in different guises, been on tour for around ten years and if you haven’t had a chance to see it at Greenwich my guess is that it will be at another venue near us soon.

On the face of it I can’t think why anybody would like to hang around with Alfie – he’s selfish, aggressive and thoughtless. Yet, he also has the disarming innocence of a talkative adolescent, and that is a combination that has charmed audiences on radio, film and stage for a couple of generations. However much it’s against your better judgement, it’s worth spending time with Alfie while he’s at Greenwich Theatre.

The 60’s setting of Bill Naughton’s play roots the action in an era when the world was beginning to talk openly about sex and violence – the play marks a coming of age, not just for Alfie but for British society. During his voyage of self-discovery Alfie’s character appeals because he’s uncomfortably like us, an Everyman, constantly surprised by life and forced to shift his moral compass in the face of events.

A small cast of five highly talented performers confidently weave their way through Alfie’s sequence of sexual conquests, leaving in their wake a series of abandoned and hopeless figures. While the females are at the heart of the story, Ben Harrison and Courtney Spence create fine characters that convey the general hopelessness of the male of the species – all seeking the unfulfilled dream of happy partnerships. Gabrielle Meadows and Lisa Howard have the most difficult jobs, skilfully creating the widest range of comic and alluring female characters at, literally, the drop of a hat.

Sex is integral to Alfie’s character and director Adrian McDougall plays this theme well. We don’t have any steamy scenes or titillation on stage, but we do have thoroughly prosaic sex in bedsits, flats and the front of cars. This reinforces Alfie’s ordinariness and sets up the inevitable consequence of his action, an emotionally gruelling abortion scene towards the end of the play. It’s difficult to see any hope for the women who Alfie casts off like abandoned lacy knickers. The play does emphasise that fun must be paid for one way or another – and that’s a pretty depressing thought.

This seriousness is offset by a huge amount of comedy, from the cameo interval performance by the tea lady running the transport café to the inventive use of the band to create sound effects. Alfie too makes people laugh, and Edward Elk’s performance is central to the success of the evening. He has some pretty big shoes to fill, following Michael Caine and Jude Law, but Elks tightens the laces and makes those shoes do the walking. Inevitably Elks echoes his screen predecessors, both in speech and looks, but he never mimics them and he is able to strike up an intimacy with the audience with complete conviction. When he takes us back to ‘my place’ it is clear that we have become friends, and this sense of trust is thoroughly engaging. Elk’s Alfie is warm and honest; he thrives by living on a knife edge between comedy and tragedy.

‘Take me as I am, or not at all’ is one of Alfie’s mantras. I should allow him to take you into his confidence for the duration of the play – but with the proviso that he stays on stage and leaves you in your seat, lest you become a conquest too.

There’s some pretty impressive lurking going on at Greenwich Theatre. The Duchess of Malfi shouldn’t be all about hiding in shadows but if you don’t get enough of it in a Jacobean revenge tragedy you can feel shortchanged. It is clear that the cast and the audience very much enjoyed the lurk-level in Elizabeth Freestone’s interpretation.

After all the shifty action in the windows and the doors, there’s no way round confronting the bloody nature of the play head on. Knifing, incest, mutilation, infanticide, regicide, strangulation, and torture are its currency or even, dare I say it, its lifeblood. Since we have turned up to see the play we might as well enjoy its violence, and for the greater part of the evening this worked well. Pools of blood and stained blankets effectively implied the horror without too many full on Tarantino moments; the lady in front of me barely had her hand from in front of her eyes during the second half.

So, aside from the lurking, what’s it all about and what line has this production taken? I found that a little hard to define and, although the production is an enjoyable gallop through a gory story, I feel that play has more to offer than that.

I wasn’t convinced by the decision to set the play in what I took to be the 1930’s against the gathering clouds of war. The Duchess’s powerful cardinal brother sheds his cassock for a Fuhrer’s uniform and suddenly we are in World War II. The only scene that I thought was illuminated by this setting was when Antonio, the Duchess and their family cross the stage like refugees fleeing from the ruins of their former lives. This image was certainly poignant and made the subsequent murders all the more shocking.

There are a couple of really fine performances that get to the heart of Webster’s theatricality. Tim Treloar as Bosola is a truly evil presence making the pulse beat faster; even when he repents it is difficult for us to find any sympathy. Aislin McGuckin’s Duchess is a commanding presence at the emotional centre of the production, finely moving from love to ruin whilst retaining a perfectly believable poise and integrity.

The imagery in Webster’s play is surprisingly modern and effective, sideswipes at corrupt politician and duplicitous Catholic prelates are hard hitting and have powerful resonances for our age, and possibly for all time. Elizabeth Freestone is greatly skilled at creating images that keep the audience on its toes, and none more so than the startling opening sequence in which we are left to watch the members of the cast slowly breathe their way through a minute’s silence. However, despite the visual strength, the violence and the well-told story, nagging at the back of my mind throughout was a feeling that the production didn’t really make sense of the action; I needed a firmer guide through the comings and goings.

The designer, Neil Irish, has used the space with complete assurance and it’s a real pleasure to see that he has made the fabric of Greenwich Theatre breath again. StageOnScreen’s production, specifically designed for the theatre, confirms that the building can be much more than a tour venue; we really do have a jewel on our doorstep.

One of Greenwich Theatre’s highlights last year was its collaboration with Stage on Screen resulting in productions of Dr Faustus and The School for Scandal. These plays won national critical claim, transferred to DVD and are, by all accounts, selling well to schools throughout the country. The productions marked a welcome return to producing by our theatre and 2009’s Dr Faustus was unashamedly local, using a set and props that looked as though they’d been borrowed from the Royal Observatory for the purpose. Even the DVD of the production began with a high-speed trip down the Thames taking in local sights before arriving at Greenwich Theatre.

Ben Jonson’s Volpone, which opens this week, is the new joint project and will be joined by Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. To some extent Volpone is a parable for our times, a comic story of greed, covetousness and feathering one’s own nest – the director might have had Canary Wharf in her sights as she travelled to Greenwich. However, the moral of the tale is wider than this and applies to get-rich-quick schemes throughout the ages. For his audience Jonson ironically, and successfully, seeks to mix ‘profit with your pleasure’.

The arcaded walls and tiled floor root the play in Venice, while smoke billows ominously around the theatre. There is a sense of spaciousness, created by designer Neil Irish, that is appropriate to large Venetian piazzas and palazzos. It is a world inhabited by humans who exhibit almost every deadly sin, most notably greed and lechery. Jonson, and the production, successfully unsettle the audience by creating drama in that most awkward area, between high comedy and brutal violence. Often the play is hilarious, but that only highlights the brutality of deception and rape.

The play’s success can be measured by the comic relationship between the double act at the centre of the action. In this production we find an almost perfect pairing, Richard Bremmer’s spidery Volpone disgusts and amuses in equal measure and is served brilliantly by Mark Hadfield’s energetic and crumpled fixer, Mosca (aka the parasite). Amongst the excellent cast I would highlight James Wallace’s creation of a hugely endearing character, Sir Politic Would-be. His sunburnt features and panda eyes parody perfectly the Englishman abroad. His character seems to pay homage to the late Iain Carmichael as the audience’s sympathy is aroused by his truly pathetic attempts to be an entrepreneur.

Director Elizabeth Freestone has created a hugely imaginative world in which she can slow time down, speed it up and rewind it in order to manipulate the characters for the audience’s greater enjoyment, the action after the interval being a particular treat. The costumes are wonderfully absurd creations, touched with slightly cartoon-like features, for instance stiff curled tailcoats and absurd feathers. The only element which worried me was the role of Volpone’s colourful array of companions, including a rather tall dwarf, and an unmusical castrate. Although these are Jonson’s comic clowns, in this production, they were less funny and more uncertain than one might expect.

The introduction in the programme suggests that an aim is to ‘restore Greenwich Theatre to its position as one of London’s significant producing theatres’. On this evidence it has returned and now needs to consolidate its success – perhaps with Volpone’s sister production The Duchess of Malfi?

Volpone at Greenwich Theatre running until April 10th