Sense of enchantment

Unsurprisingly then, there is a strong sense of the absurd as well as pathos running through this piece, reflected not just in the love stories between horses and ants that mingle with those of adults, but in the pithy, deadpan dialogue. There is no overriding narrative, instead a series of tiny scenes. Correspondingly, it's not so much the big picture that engages on a theatrical level, but the many tiny visual details: a puppet smoking a cigarette, a lorry sprinkled with sand (rain) as it crosses a desert.

Puppetry can be a frustratingly passive form of theatre, and Tbilisi Marionette's intricate set pieces do fall victim to this occasionally: there is a suspicion that, as an audience, much of the experience of watching this is about admiring the skill of the puppeteers. But puppetry's real strength is an uncanny sense of enchantment, and there's no denying the presence of that.

Tube: Barbican/Moorgate

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