Biblical Tales
New End Theatre, London NW3

No Edinburgh for me this summer - the children would only have got themselves singed by the fire-eaters on the Royal Mile - so I re-created a Fringe outing for myself in London. This consisted of a trek in the rain to a pretty part of town, a too-hurried meal in a too-slow restaurant and then, most authentically of all, two hours in a small space trying to work out whether Steven Berkoff is a genius or a bore.

Berkoff, in a press release for Biblical Tales, which he wrote and directed but does not act in, says that he was prompted to rework four of the "most cherished" Old Testament myths by the recent Gaza war and the "appalling flak" that Israel received. His Tales are a way of investigating ancient Jewish values. I was glad of the tip-off, or I might have accused him of resorting to that most ancient of cures for writer's block - stealing greater writers' plots, a remedy that works only if you have something pretty special to add (as in Cole Porter's songs for the 1956 Philadelphia Story remake, High Society).

Berkoff's first playlet, the Garden of Eden as an episode of EastEnders (Adam to Eve: "You're a doll, straight up"), adds extraordinarily little, and few laughs. Despite launching with a mighty obscenity, the sketch feels dated: more Eric and Ernie than the Pythons. Mark Frost comes on in a pink bodysuit, a huge, flaccid dick stuck to him, in a state of post-partum rapture at having just given "birth" to Eve. Sarah Chamberlain, in matching pink and a stage-school attempt at Babs Windsor's vowels, is unimpressed. Adam's attempts to turn her on by extolling the nightlife (all those copulating frogs) backfire when she gets the hots for Anthony Barclay's serpent, who, despite speaking like Simon Callow, is temptingly
penis-shaped. Post-fall, Adam blames Eve and the rowing couple can only agree that knowledge is tasty and nudity shameful. Ancient Jewish values uncovered: the love of intellect, shame and misogyny.

The second act is an even sillier sketch, in which Alex Giannini's cigar-smoking wide boy Saul sits in a café, manipulating his dim pal David (Barclay again) into taking on Goliath, most of their race having become accountants and novelists (though not plumbers: "They're the Poles" - oh, dear) and lost their martial skills. David is goaded into action to prove his manhood against Saul's slurs about his friendship with Jonathan. Ancient Jewish value: the gift of the gab.

The evening begins to gain credibility only after the interval, with a retelling of Samson and Delilah. Chamberlain gets a chance to show she can act, as the femme fatale wheedling away at the secret of Samson's strength. The play is performed as a continuous act of balletic lovemaking in which Matthew Clancy's strongman proves no match for her sinuous needling. The action reminds us of the best of Berkoff's physical theatre, although the language is dully Old Testament ("For I do hate them, though they are my brethren"), Berkoff having apparently given up on the task of updating the stories' vernacular. Ancient Jewish values: never trust a woman, blood is thicker than semen.

The final act, on the pharaoh and Moses, is barely a retelling at all, but it is a reasonable execution - at a kind of secondary-school level - of the myth of Exodus, with some actorly opportunities for swatting away imaginary locusts and frogs. Frost's pharaoh is presented as a climate-change denier, always ready to rationalise away the magic of the God of Moses. Giannini as Moses sits know-all and motionless, making outrageous demands and carrying out God's threats more in sorrow than in anger.

He reminded me of one of the insufferable gurus in Peter Brook's 11 and 12 earlier this year. Vintage Berkoff would have turned his repeats of "Let my people go" into a lunatic chant. Had I been the pharaoh, I would have let his people go just to get rid of Moses. Ancient Jewish value: undue respect for a bad-tempered deity - a "cruel god of death", as the polytheist pharaoh puts it. If Jews really cherish the values advertised in this unsatisfactory evening - a few bricks short of a pyramid, to quote the pharaoh - no wonder they get "flak". I bet the Jewish Chronicle has something to say.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times.