Trials of the unexpected

Flaubert would no doubt be pretty astonished to witness what his lifelong work (which took 30 years to complete) has inspired from theatrical visionary Robert Wilson.

In conjunction with political activist and Sweet Honey In The Rock founder Bernice Johnson Reagon, Wilson has created a fantastical gospel musical, a whirling visual and aural feast that whisks our protagonist from his desert isolation through a plethora of carnal temptations (including the Queen Of Sheba and a gold-trousered Adonis) and into outer space.

Wilson's almost bare white stage transforms over and over again as a light show that demarcates space and creates and changes mood and in typical Wilson fashion is almost a character in its own right.

The permanently perplexed St Anthony (played by the impossibly rich-voiced Carl Hancock Rux) is buffeted amid a chorus of singer/actors, who fill the stage with constant colour and movement. Reagon's score, swooping from spirituals and gospels through blues and jazz, with even a hint of funk, is an inspired way to suggest Anthony's trials: the power of this music, which has its roots in slavery, comes from the suffering it tries to alleviate, and it also helps to emphasise the universality of the fable unfolding before us.

If some of the snappiness is lost as Anthony is taken on a tour of competing religious and philosophical beliefs - it is maybe unfortunate that a song with the repeated line 'I go on forever' comes just as the audience is at its most fidgety - this is nevertheless an astonishing theatrical experience.

The Tempest