A floating dream

If your soul needs a little light refreshment, then you would be well advised to head down the hill to St Stephen's to see this year's offering from St Petersburg's cult physical theatre company Derevo.

Both enigmatically whimsical and hauntingly witty, it is less intellectually portentous than last year's hellish La Divina Commedia, but it would be wrong to invoke this as a reason to underestimate a show steeped in rhapsodic beauty and dark poetic humour.

When the audience gathers in St Stephen's, the performing area is enveloped in such inky darkness that it is possible to fantasise that rather than being in front of a stage, you are sitting at the edge of some bottomless pit. Suddenly something white flutters towards you, a light ethereal presence that is revealed as a slim and intensely poised young woman carrying a badminton racket for an imaginary game.

Often, the playful evanescence of this show seems to epitomise the way humans try to grab the elusive - whether it is in the repeated image of the romantic sailor gazing out to sea (on one occasion he tries to launch a paper boat, on another to release a goldfish), the insubstantial beam of light linking two lovers, or the poetic moment when two women try to capture a beautiful silver bubble that hovers above a misty stage.

There is no obvious narrative theme, but for most of the time, the performing area is washed with a watery light. This takes the tone from the frivolous above-the-waves hedonism of the lovers' scenes to more disturbing images where the performers twitch like escapees from a Hieronymus Bosch painting, reminiscent of basic life forms at the bottoms of the sea.

Like a well-constructed sonata, the piece's coherence comes from a skilful balance of different emotional themes, where moments of frivolity are counterbalanced with moments of surreal solemnity, such as the Dalistyle instance when a man with a long axe prepares himself to strike a short tree growing out of a boot. The chillingly nihilistic end adds an icy frisson to this glorious floating dream.

Until 25 August. Box office: 0131 558 3853.