Superb acting and stage design boost this tale of a brutal ruler's downfall The Emperor Jones Olivier Theatre, London SE1

Eugene O'Neill's startling play, about an American convict who becomes the ruler of a Caribbean island, is just 70 minutes long, but it is a much more subtle and textured affair than many plays of twice its length. It is grandiose, however, to stage it in the giant Olivier auditorium and clog it up with about 40 unnecessary extras. The Emperor Jones is so focused on its central figure that it is almost a one-man show, and Thea Sharrock's production, which has transferred from the tiny Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, may have lost some of its power in being so inflated. Still, she is blessed both with a mesmerising lead man and with Robin Don's giant design, which is as forthright as the brutal regime it frames.

We are presented with the interior of a corrugated-iron structure, whose steep gable and bell indicate that it once may have been a church. It has now been sprayed gold, and, instead of a pulpit, there is a platform on which a giant gilded throne rests. God's word has been replaced by the official demesne of Brutus Jones, a black American stowaway and con artist who, through a combination of luck and "Yankee bluff", has set himself up as emperor of this anonymous Caribbean island.

As the Emperor Jones, white-suited Paterson Joseph possesses self-confidence by the barrel-load and lolls in his throne like Stalin, Idi Amin or Saddam Hussein. Pick your despot; this play, written in 1920, delivers a fearsomely accurate forecast for most of them.

O'Neill also implicitly and presciently prefigures a particularly 20th-century dilemma - that of the humble individual whose advancement to power is achieved while denying progress for the people to which he/she once belonged. Jones treats the "bush niggers" on the island with deep contempt. He may have scaled the bastions of power, but he has pulled the ladder up behind him.

However, when we join him, things aren't going well. As the cringing cockney trader Henry Smithers (John Marquez) explains, Jones's despised subjects have run off to the hills and are planning to depose him. Maybe he should have been a bit more polite to them.

Dressed in pukka colonial gear, the slimy Smithers must at first tiptoe around the imperial carpet paying obeisance to Jones. As the balance of power between the two men shifts, however, Smithers feels able to walk all over it. When Jones panics and flees to the jungle, Smithers actually rolls up the carpet and takes it for himself.

At first, we think Jones is going to get away with his escape. "I kisses the job goodbye!" he boasts. Only his nervously darting eyes belie inner fears. As darkness falls on the jungle, spookily rendered by a giant, corrugated-iron canopy, and as the drums of his pursuers pound, Jones quickly sheds not only his medals, but his whole fragile carapace of confidence.

O'Neill, one of the first major modern playwrights to put a black character centre stage, then gives us a rapid flashback of the black American experience, from cargoes of slaves to the prison chain gang. Jones expends his precious bullets on shooting ghosts and is all but destroyed by his own terror. Yes, this play is about black history, but more than that, it is about what happens when civilisation disappears and you are thrown into the pitiless maw of nature.

And yet Jones is not simply a trembling dictator; he is thoroughly engaging, and Joseph plays him like a hero. In particular, his brave attempts to boost his rapidly ebbing courage in the middle of a pulsating, whispering, fearsomely dark jungle were so engagingly convincing that, even in the carpeted magnificence of the Olivier auditorium, I started to worry about how I would cope in those conditions.

Blessed with Yankee realism, as well as bluff, Jones even sees his self-appointed "job" of emperor for what it is. "I'm going to give it six more months," he tells Smithers, as if he were a locum doctor. How many people who end up on the golden throne of fame and power today manage to nail their own inevitable obsolescence with such candid accuracy?

For further info and booking details visit: www.nationaltheatre.com

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