Have this company just popped out to a local charity shop to purchase their meagre props? Are the tables covered untidily with throws, the bedsit divan, lopsided chandelier and tied net curtains a credible setting for fancy Parisian parties and country-house loving? What a strange state of affairs this ballet Traviata sets before us.

Taped Verdi opera, cut and pasted from all over his oeuvre and stripped of the vocal parts, makes for an unpromising starting point, and at times - particularly during the first act - it sounds as though we are stuck on a loop tape. What is going on? If you know the story, you could conceivably use your imagination. Otherwise the endless exits and entrances, sighs and smiles might set you off on a fit of the giggles, but leave you none the wiser.

The ballet is the story of a courtesan - the one most recently told in the film Moulin Rouge. She falls in love with a respectable man. He is warned off. He duels with his rival, the Baron. She, a consumptive, expires in the end. This production claims to take the flashback approach but there is nothing flash about it. Confused and muddled, the choreography keeps things at a slow canter - and repeats and repeats. The lead costume goes from red to white to black, in tune with the lighting, but little else seems to change.

Tambourine-bashing and what seems like the hokey-kokey by some carnival revellers make up the show's attempt at a rousing finale, and then the lady in the nightie is dead. Finish. This company have been operating for 20 years out of Milan and have performed at the Bolshoi in Moscow, but despite a smattering of elegant dancing, this production falls short of usual Festival Theatre standards.