When opera meets dressage

The fanfare written by Maurice Jarre for the first Avignon festival, rang out over the old papal city to announce the opening performance of the 1997 Avignon Festival of Theatre. Nightfall and the rising mistral added to the almost solemn occasion earlier this month as crowds thronged the courtyard of the 14th-century Palais des Papes to see Nathan Le Sage by the German Enlightenment writer, G.E. Lessing.

The sheer size of this courtyard, its historical connotations and its location of the heart of the city, have traditionally made its colourful, opening productions the centre piece of the festival. Veteran theatre goers fondly recall performances of Shakespear and Moliere by Jean Vilar (the festival's original director) and his Theatre National Populaire. The immense seating capacity of the open air auditorium also allowed Jean Vilar to accommodate as many spectators as possible in accordance with his philosophy of popular theatre and his oft quoted maxim that "theatre is a public service like water, gas or electricity".

Despite its length, Quebecois director Denis Marleau's four-hour production of Nathan Le Sage was well received at the Palais du Papes. Written in 1779, Lessing's rarely produced play about religious tolerance is set in Jerusalem at the time of the third crusade. The plot revolves around three male characters of overtly antagonistic religions who are finally drawn together by Nathan's daughter.

Chosen by Marleau after his invitation to the festival, this analytical piece, in which relatively little happens, is in many respects a curious choice for huge space in which it is played. Indeed it could hardly be further away from the life and death theatre of the gladiators who once performed in the amphi-theatres that surround Avignon in Nimes and Arles. This approach reinforces the distance between spectators and characters, with the exception of Sami Frey who is engaging and funny as Nathan. The result is a curious mix of intellectual stimulation and emotional indifference but the grand scale of the production and its palatial context is nevertheless awe-inspiring.

The Papal Palace is not the only historical venue in Avignon. In keeping with Jean Vilar's policy of integrating theatre into public life, the festival makes use of numerous monuments and gardens so that a week at the theatre is also an architectural tour of the city. The Avignon theatre festival is a month of explosive cultural activity encompassing dance, music and street theatre. Although it has become host to internationally known artists, the festival still manages to avoid the elitism which so horrified its first director. In conjunction with the 450 performances that run until August 3rd, public interviews and debates are scheduled for the cooler hours of the day. These meetings are designed not just to provide public access to artists, but also, to expose artists to real public opinion. Speaking at one such meeting last week, choreographer Angelin Prejlocaj, who recently created La Stravanganza for the New York City Ballet said that he Welcomed the opportunity to hear audience opinion, and politely refused to explain the intended meaning of his dance performance insisting, rather, on hearing the reaction of those who had seen it.

Outside the garden of a local school, people form a long queue, hoping desperately for cancellations so they can see Prejlocaj's Paysage Apres La Bataille (Landscape After the Battle). The company, based locally in Aix-en Provence, performs for an exhilarating hour and 20 minutes creating images of violence, sex and power. Prejlocaj incorporates quotations by Joseph Conrad and Marcel Duchamp into Goran Vijvoda's soundtrack and describes Paysage as "an imaginary battle between the writer and the artist, in other words, between the instinct and the intellect".

The first sequence evokes the ballroom: 12 couples dance slowly to Ti Amo by Umberto Tozzi; gradually the song ends and the scene becomes distorted. Romance turns to sleaze and three women are left brutally beaten on the floor. The following sequence of violent movement is forceful and finely executed and culminates in the composition and re-composition of still images of destruction. The individual performances are fine and humorous at times when Prejlocaj allows his dancers some tongue in cheek allusions to Pulp Fiction and Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Outside the medieval walls of the city in Chateaublanc-Parc des Expositions, one of the more unusual spectacles of the festival is billed as an "equestrian opera". Zingaro's third show, entitled Eclipse, takes place in a circus arena to the accompaniment of five Korean musicians and a solo singer. There are 24 horses and 13 riders in this performance which straddles the genres of circus, dressage and ritual. Acrobatic feats are performed with, and on, horses, and choreographer Bartabas creates some wonderful images with his theme colours of black and white. But the correlation between music and physical performance is bewildering and the equestrian spectacle and opera remain two discrete concepts. The rapturous applause which greeted the spectacle would, however, suggest that one or other of these elements is sufficient and Zingaro is already selling tickets for the remainder of its French tour before it moves to New York next year.

Ubu And The Truth Commission after Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi promises to be the English language highlight of this year's festival. This is the third collaboration between South African Handsprung Puppet Company and director William Kentridge following their excellent Faustus In Africa and Woyzeck On The Highveld at last year's festival. According to Kentridge, the play is "an attempt to find a new way of looking at documentary theatre in a South African context". There are no plans to take the show to Ireland, unfortunately, although actor Dawid Minnaar stresses the international resonance of the play and the positive reaction of audiences in both Germany and South Africa. After Avignon the play will return to Johannesburg for an extended run before taking on the rest of Europe.

As part of the Russian theme at this year's Avignon festival, Une Aventure, written by Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and directed by the well-respected Ivan Popovski, is a visually stunning co-production by the Piotr Formenko Studio and The Russian Academy of theatre. The superb acting, flamboyant costumes and the ingenious set, which locates all the action in a corridor seen through an open doorway, make it a rewarding theatrical experience even for the non-Russian speaker. K. I. du Crime by Daniil Guink after Dostoyevsky is a more difficult monologue by Katherina Ivanova. Her performance is remarkable, however, and she draws the audience into her moving performance as she descends into final madness and death. In an uncanny coincidence, just an hour after the performance the Russian actress appeared as a perfectly sane face in the crowd for the traditional Bastille day fireworks at the Pont D'Avignon.

In the third week of the festival, costumed actors continue to advertise their shows on the street by singing their own praises to prospective punters. Not far from all this carnival madness, outside the city walls at Porte St Lazare, there is the intimation of an inevitable return to Provencal normality as shirt-sleeved men play boules in the shade.