The Adventures of the Stoneheads is a deceptively simple tale conveyed with visual clarity, penetrating insight and overwhelming generosity of scope. It is an exceptional piece of theatre, suitable for any age. Young people will appreciate its filmic quality.

A family is washed up on a strange shore, hungry, cold and hopeful. As the play unfolds we follow the travails of each of its members, and most particularly those of the father character as he leaves his family to seek work in the city. We view the often hostile new culture through the eyes of the refugees - and in the process are drawn into contemplation about how we, in our own culture, treat those who migrate into it.

Trestle Theatre Company have been rightly celebrated for their innovative mask work over the last two decades. Mime and gesture are especially apt tools for this play because they highlight the language barrier between the displaced family and members of the new society: the masks and padding emphasize the muffled detachment felt by the outsider.

Part of this play's unique character originates in the way in which our thoughts are shaped not through dialogue, but through the use of movement, sound, lighting and spatial dimensions. The masks (perhaps surprisingly) allow the actors remarkable breadth of expression, while light and sound are used astutely to evoke warmth, anguish, bewilderment and hope. Transformations of the set occur frequently and fluidly as the story takes us to bars, brothels and back alleys.

When characters don't speak, something happens to our perception of them. Vast scope opens for symbolism as they receive the thoughts we project onto them - and in the words of director Toby Wilsher, 'the audience creates the dialogue, inventing a different narrative each time'. Silent characters are emancipated from the confines of mere words.

A bewildering, dream-like atmosphere is sustained throughout, as the characters struggle to grasp the surreal logics of their new environment. Myth comes into play with a sequence featuring the son's haunting Orphic descent to a bureaucratic hell where the devil works busily at reception. Despite the pervasive, recurrent anguish and despair, humour is not a casualty of symbolism, but its essential component.

The Adventures of the Stoneheads triumphs through its ability to draw us into the refugees' world without accusation or blame being directed at anyone in particular. Instead the focus is on compassion and understanding: Wilsher simply offers us the alternatives of an all-embracing richness and depth of human character and the mean-spirited narrowness of primal xenophobia.

Tragic yet generous in spirit, magical, both light-hearted and symbolically rich, The Adventures of the Stoneheads is an intensely affecting and powerful stimulant to the conscience.

Hope Earl, 16.07.02