Random Dance Company, Sadler's Wells, London

ET meets the Muppets

Wayne McGregor is a better choreographer than you might imagine from some of the pretentious twaddle printed about him (in which he has himself not been entirely innocent). What he does best is to set dancers moving in a distinctive manner, often with a great deal of speed and vigour. He goes in for a lot of sharply angled shapes, and that is true of his leisurely moments and static poses as well as the more active elements.

Where he is often less satisfying, it seems to me, is in his addiction to gimmicks and hi-tech tricks. Maybe what I am really saying is simply that this aspect isn't for the likes of me, because one important point about his new show, Nemesis, is that it drew an unusually young, lively (and rowdy) audience to Sadler's Wells for the first appearance there of his Random Dance Company since it was declared the theatre's resident troupe.

Whether it was primarily the dancing that attracted them, or the added elements, or a mixture of the two, who can tell? On the other hand, there does seem to be a consensus that the "digital trilogy" he made between 1997 and 2000 gained something when the three originally separate parts had their trickery cut back to be given together on one evening.

In his new Nemesis, which runs for about 65 minutes, the first half is stark: 10 dancers, mostly dressed in black, perform patterns of solos or mainly small ensembles. Behind them, photos of empty rooms are projected intermittently. Later, we are to have these dancers are grouped in a carpeted space.

However, at about the midway point they go off and change into armour-like black gear, with which they wear metallic prostheses that resemble claws but are used more like swords with a joint in the middle. Animatronics, they are apparently called, and they come courtesy of Jim Henson's Creature Workshop, of Muppets fame. For this section, the projections are turned into abstractions, while the action becomes more specific, with attacks and duels.

Thereafter McGregor himself, tall and smiley in white, his shaved pate gleaming, concludes the piece with a smooth-moving solo, while the back curtain shows patterns shaped like a sinuous worm of metal, which for the very end turns into a little man with fluttery wings. Ravi Deepres is the digital video designer, but the most significant of the collaborators seems to me to be Scanner, responsible for the score, which, with the strong rhythms of its various noises, did more than anything else to pull the disparate parts together.

Nemesis is never boring, but it scarcely adds up to the sum of its parts. "Extraterrestrial dance meets reality TV," said the publicity. "Sharp but earthy dance coincides with still pictures, videos and dangerous appliances" might be more accurate. Interesting, yes; satisfying, no.

Touring until 17 May