Tonight I had a voyage into the dark centre of the soul via Waterloo.

Owen and I went to see Eugene O'Neill's THE EMPEROR JONES at the Olivier Theatre. Thea Sharrock's production runs a mere 70 minutes but it packs in more to mull over than most full-length plays.

The play opens in the burnished gold throne room of Brutus Jones' palace on an unnamed West Indian island. Smithers, a cockney trader who is allowed access to the Emperor catches a servant escaping in the early hours and learns that the islanders who Jones has taxed and terrorized for two years are now planning to overthrow him in a coup led by Lem, a man who tried to have Jones killed soon after he came to power.

Jones appears in his full assumed military uniform and we learn that he is in fact an ex-Pullman train attendant who killed a colleague in a crap game and was sent to jail. Once inside he killed a white guard who had whipped him while on a chain gang and duly escaped to this small island where with a leg-up from the white Smithers soon managed to get himself proclaimed Emperor. Since then he has ruled the islanders tyrannically through fear, going so far as to tell them that he can be killed only with silver bullets.

But now he realises it's time to cut and run. His plan is to escape into the surrounding forests to get to the dock, sail away and claim the fortune safely stowed away in a foreign bank account. He is confident of success having previously hidden provisions there for such an occurrence and leaves the Palace armed with a revolver with 5 bullets... and one silver one.

Of course once in the forest he loses his bearings as he runs from the incessant tom-toms of the rebels and slowly becomes unhinged, confronted by ghosts of his past. But these become more intense, as his proud and boastful persona disintegrates he becomes haunted by recurring visions of Africans - from a slave auction where he is on sale, to the nightmarish journey by sea until finally confronted by a fiercesome African Witchdoctor appearing in a jet of flame who chases him to his destiny.

It is a play that's percolating in the mind long after leaving the theatre - it's themes of the loss of identity and in particular the guilt that a man who denies his heritage is prey to when this happens. Jones has become the man he is by adopting the callous tyranny of the white men he has observed and has beat them at their game by becoming the master of the island. But at what cost to his soul?

Sharrock's production - which started life in the 68-seater Gate Theatre - at times does threaten to be swamped by the sheer size of the Olivier stage but it certainly is the best setting to show off Paterson Joseph's remarkable performance as Jones. Apart from a short intro scene he is onstage the whole time and seamlessly shows the arc from a cocky Emperor happy to showboat to his minion (John Marquez makes a good weasely Smithers) to the broken, frightened man at the end of the play.

The production design of Robin Don is particularly striking - the gold palace giving way to a distressed corregated iron awning with shattered holes and chinks through half open doors which, when illumunated from above by Neil Austin's clever lighting, fills the set floor with broken moonlight as seen through the forest trees. A special mention must be made to the vibrant and hypnotic score for percussionists which nearly shakes the walls of the theatre during the climactic confrontation with the Witchdoctor. The score is provided surprisingly by Sister Bliss of the dance act Faithless.

This controversial and daring play was written in 1920 - and it was great fun to hear the confused liberals in the audience unsure of how to respond to the constant references to the island 'niggers' by Paterson Joseph, could they really not see this was showing Jones' total crossing over to the language of the tyrant as well as the trappings?