Dog

At the beginning of the 20th century, an Irish writer had high hopes for the establishment of a new kind of theatre in Dublin. It would draw on music, dance, Japanese theatre, stylised colours and the possibilities of electric light. It would also reflect his interest in Eastern philosophy, magic and a holistic view of the world. Though W.B. Yeats succeeded in founding a national theatre, it wasn't at all like this.

If he wandered into the Project this week, though, Yeats would probably experience a thrill of joy followed by an awful shock. The joy would be that the third and final episode of the Barabbas festival, Dog, is a brilliant realisation of his hopes. The shock would be that it doesn't need poets. Though it has a poetry all of its own, Dog is wordless.

In the first two shows in the festival there has been a somewhat uneasy match between the company's rigorous physical skills and the much less focused texts they have been using. Dog solves this problem in the simplest way possible - by ditching verbal text altogether. The sense of liberation is palpable. With the moorings cut, we are lifted into the realms of pure imaginative delight.

The show is written and directed by Raymond Keane, Barabbas's artistic director, and it develops the interests that have been evident in his previous shows: a daring use of props, a fluid mixture of different kinds of physical theatre and a willingness to combine a sense of play with a serious philosophical quest. The difference is that whereas his previous excursions have had the feeling of bold experiment, here there is a sense of complete mastery. This Dog is the best in show, and it knows it.

The piece is essentially a series of visual images organised around two interwoven themes. One is people in motion: walking, running, on a train, on a plane. The other is the connection between nuclear physics and Eastern mysticism, specifically the notion of the cosmic dance that runs through much Hindu mythology. The basic metaphor is what Yeats called unity of being - the notion that the same energy is running through all animate and inanimate matter.

This template makes the show sound much more abstract and convoluted than it is. The real point of Dog is that its dazzling technical complexity is at the service of wonder, pleasure and humour.

Keane marshals an astonishing array of techniques: mime, kabuki, black theatre (invisible actors manipulating illuminated props), puppetry and the clowning that is always close to the heart of Barabbas.

But you quickly stop being impressed by the quality of the artifice and get lost in the art. The images - of the big bang and the atom, of a runner becoming the dog that chases her, of a pair of lovers trying to join the mile-high club and being transformed into the Hindu deities Shiva and Shakti, of pure energy in motion - are everything.

Likewise, the individual contributions - of Keane's guiding imagination, of Miriam Duffy's wonderful props and effects, and of the splendid new Barabbas company - meld into the seamless succession of enchantments. Which is, of course, the point that the show wants to make.

Runs until December 10th; to book, phone 1850-260027