Mr Carmen

As we enter the theatre, a game is in progress. Two men check and swap cards with one another, occasionally peering out through opera glasses into the crowd, reminding us of the artifice we are about to be party to and establishing an edge of playful menace that never quite goes away throughout this eerie, spectral show.

This is St Petersburg-based AKHE's paring down of Prosper Mérimée's novella (probably better known as the basis for Bizet's opera) into a stand-off between the two lead characters, Carmen and Jose. Engaged in a power battle pageant, Maksim Isaev and Pavel Semchenko spell out the characters' names in increasingly creative ways, only for them to be cruelly destroyed or vanish of their own accord. Mr Carmen dips a rose in red wine and holds it between his toes to scrawl across a sheet of brown paper. Jose drinks vinegar and sprays it into a spotlight illuminating his name in the mist.

It's these rag-and-bone stage innovations that elevate this show to the level of magic, drawing you into its war of words, keeping you guessing at what will happen next and more importantly how it will be won out.

The sensory experience is total, not just through Vadim Gololobov's chiaroscuro lighting but with delicious-scented cigars, acidic notes of paint and vinegar hanging in the air and the tactile materials—roses, sugar, coffee—produced only to be ravaged.

A little more clarity might do better justice to AKHE's unbridled creativity. But the dreamscape the company creates is so mesmerising, it's enough just to allow yourself to be spellbound.