Myth magic

It's August of last year. The rain is bouncing off the Edinburgh pavements as the queue squelches, slowly, into the hall. And you can imagine the jokes that are being made all down the line, because we're here to see Theatre Talipot in - The Water Carriers. . . An hour and a half later, the rain has settled into a resolute downpour - and people are standing on the pavement, upturned faces spattered with water-drops, and there's a curious mood of elation and relief. Because we've just glimpsed a way of life where drought is the order of the day and water is the stuff that dreams and myths are made of. And, for a little while at least, there's a heightened sense of the sheer luxury that is ours at the turn of a tap.

So what kind of show makes an audience feel unexpectedly good about wet weather? A show that has an absolute grasp of storytelling and an all-male cast that can tell stories superbly, through music and movement as well as words. There is something disarming, thrilling, about watching really skilled and versatile performers slip in and out of different characters, different modes - quite literally monkeying around (as a quartet of hilariously vocal apes) one moment, and the next entering upon a vivid, poetic evocation of a land so parched of water that the very wellsprings of common humanity dry up. A claque of gossipy old besoms - the men even have universal grannies in their repertoire! - sit like guardian harpies at a distant well. Time was that a weary traveller would have been washed and welcomed. . . But hospitality ceases to be so open-handed when the ownership of water becomes not just the difference between life and death, but the leverage to wealth and power.

There is, however, another deeply-moving side to this award-winning piece. It looks beyond the immediate, harrowing physicality of the experience and journeys on, into the inner landscape of dreams and stories that crowd into the heated minds of thirsty people. Here are the mystical tales that communities collude in, in an attempt to make sense - or make peace - with a harsh situation. Here is the blossoming of tradition; the little rituals and superstitions that build into acts of faith - like rainmaking shows, where a blitz of percussive rhythms (from the performers) tries to entice an answering thunder from the skies.

At times it's hard to believe that this rich microcosm of people, plants and animals is accomplished by just four men with simple bamboo poles. Which is where old and new theatre practices come together and cross over - with canny assistance from French director Phillipe Pelen and artistic adviser Savitry Nair, an Indian dancer and choreographer who has worked with Maurice Bejart and Pina Bausch. Their outside eye has helped translate the ancient myths into a timeless and deeply affecting piece of physical theatre.

Modern technology as such is never intrusive; the lighting might help to transform the bare stage into a murky jungle or a heat-seared plain, but it's the men - clad only in loincloths - who create the sights, sounds and resonances of each scene. They clown perceptively, they sing wonderfully and wholeheartedly, opening their throats in outbursts of glorious a capella harmony. They dance with all-out exuberance, and they tell the stories as if they themselves had dreamed them, cherishing the narrative cadences, the language, the sly humours and the underlying skein of spirituality that makes this imaginative quest so heartfelt and uplifting. And though the images are drawn from Theatre Talipot's home region - Reunion in the Indian Ocean - there are echoes of other, neighbouring cultures too. As if to remind us, albeit gently, that whatever our colour, creed or ancestry, we share similar needs and asirations - without water, none of us would survive.

On-stage, in Once. . . , Anton Adassinski is every inch the grotty, fumbling, tongue-tied hobo who has "loser" programmed into every strand of his DNA. No way will he ever win the girl of his dreams - a wisp of fey femininity, who wafts, instead, into the arms of an elegant stranger. One who bears more than a passing resemblance to a vampiric Count from Gothick-Transylvania (aka a mist-shrouded back-lot somewhere in Hollywood).

Once. . . , as the title suggests, is verging on a fairytale. Only - as Adassinksi and his fellow members of Derevo know - these days our fairytales come courtesy of film-makers. And so their exquisite, bittersweet take on romance harks back to the early (silent) heydays of the silver screen, when actions spoke all of the tentative, passionate yearnings that people still have difficulty putting into words.

Off-stage, however, Adassinski emerges as far from tongue-tied - or indeed any kind of loser - when he speaks of the award-winning company and their work. He's on record as describing Derevo as fanatics for their art. "We live outside normal real life, make hard sacrifices and work for eight or 10 hours every day. We get results." They surely do. Underpinning all the blissful invention - the whimsical sight gags, the cunning bits and bobs of bizarre machinery that add to the unreal, surreal feel of the piece - there is a fierce, committed discipline that melds all five performers together, ensuring the kind of seamless ensemble playing that looks artless but is, of course, anything but.

The basis for much of Derevo's consummate artistry is clowning. But clowning that derives from the Russian school with its particular penchant for melancholy and sentiment, its interaction between physical and metaphysical. Before Derevo came into being, in 1988, Adassinksi had been both a pupil and colleague of Slava Polunin, one of the most inspired masters of mime and physical comedy this century. Like Polunin, Adassinski - and his carefully-selected colleagues in Derevo - values the slippage that can exist between a moment of ludicrous mayhem and a moment of genuine pathos. By adding, steadily, to their vocabulary of movement styles - there are now nuances of Butoh, contemporary dance, acrobatics and endurance training in their self-styled brand of "anti-clowning" - they have evolved a distinctive company "language" that is just as capable of expressing chaos and insanity (in the utterly scarifying Red Zone) as it is of revealing the tenderness and forlorn, adoring hope that runs through Once. . .

For audiences in Edinburgh who had hailed Red Zone as an uncompromising reflection of our indifferent times, Once. . . came as something of a shock. Who on earth would expect the lean, mean, shavenheaded tribe of Derevo to perform, let alone devise, a fairytale about love? The question just about answers itself; for Derevo aren't interested in getting into a repetitive rut - and what, in these days of designer irony and off-the-peg cynicism, could frighten audiences more than a vision of their most secret fantasies, especially the one that has a happy-ever-after ending?

Remember, though, that this is a fairytale for adults. Endings - just like notions of happiness - are not always what they seem. Stay in your seats till the bald lady sings. . . You'll long for more of Adassinski's inventive looning around, crumpling like a human anglepoise as an inept Cupid screws up or gamely fighting against all odds - and things get very odd in this magical show - to rescue his Beauty from a rival who is not quite the man he seems. You'll want to linger in a world where you can wish upon a star - and be the centre of a whirlwind comedy of errors and terrors where you don't know whether to laugh or cry. . . but you end up knowing that it's better to be heart-broken than heartless.

Mary Brennan writes on dance and physical theatre for the Glasgow Herald