A gauze at the front, while subtly, perhaps sadly distancing us from the performers, allows film designer Ravi Deepres (ably assisted by Lucy Carter, another McGregor regular) to let rip with the near-3D projections, which are often eye-wideningly impressive: a floating, almost god-like kaleidoscopic fish here, a revolving, last-surviving tree there early on, the surface of the ocean 20 feet about our heads later, a parched sea bed stretching into infinity.ĭoes this stunning digital wizardry impress more than the choreography? Arguably.

Playing well to the strengths of both McGregor – who has no interest in regular storytelling – and his regular dramaturg Uzma Hameed, the work is a dreamlike tapestry of interlinking, often overlapping vignettes mirroring Thra in our own, ailing, riven planet: its beauty, what we’re doing to it and even how we might fix it. This time round, there are, as you might expect (hope, even) a certain number of evil Skeksis masks and sweetly shaggy urRu costumes for some of the 10 dancers, but the whole thing is above all an intimate (because of the small, lovely Linbury theatre) but otherwise epically conceived son-et-lumière, battle-between-light-and-dark spectacular that completely draws you in and doesn’t let go for its entire, interval-free 70 minutes.

Henson’s animatronic-driven movie chronicled the struggles of the benign urRu to vanquish the evil Skeksis and save their dying planet, Thra. Seldom talked about these days but still vividly remembered, this noirish fable, complete with ecological overtones, now serves as the jumping-off point for the latest work by Royal Ballet artist-in-residence Wayne McGregor – here, however, working not with the Royal but with his own, superb contemporary troupe. Following fairly hot on the heels of 1978’s Watership Down, Jim Henson’s 1982 fantasy The Dark Crystal was one of those ambitious children’s films that gave many children the absolute willies.

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