‘There have been great societies that did not use the wheel,’ Ursula Le Guin has pointed out, ‘but no societies that did not tell stories.’
Five performers with varying theatrical and geographical backgrounds set out to prove the truth of this – via African tales, Indian legends and Japanese proverbs – using a drum, a scarf and a few bamboo poles. They also bring a sharp awareness that every shape has a shadow, so that self-sacrifice can be as problematic as an act so selfish it leads to destruction.
This is serious stuff, but it is noticeable how much fun the actors have with it. Those shiny CVs – Complicite, Lecoq, Peter Brook – glint between the bamboo as Patrice Naiambana transforms himself into a pigeon, Kathryn Hunter becomes a grieving Malian mother or Marcello Magni (who also directs) stiffens into a would-be corpse, all to the sound of Tunde Jegede’s music.
There are moments that simply don’t work: ‘The Gift’ may be an adaptation of a true story but that doesn’t make it less simplistic. Still, the joy in self-transformation unbounded, the acting superb and the kick of the final parable will keep me grinning wryly for days. ‘Let the story speak,’ says one character. And so they do.