Mycelium Theatre Company’s first ever production has set their bar extremely high for what lies ahead. The company is a small group of theatre-makers graduating from LAMDA and Royal Welsh Conservatoire. The four performers are led with real confidence by Ben Boulton-Jones who plays the renowned scientist James Weiss as both a five year old boy and a 35 year old celebrated microbiologist.

The show is an unusual mix of storytelling, live overhead projection, shadow play, and dance. Yeah. It is.

Boulton-Jones is ably supported by Greta Abbey, Allie-Rae Fossum (who both lead on the sensational overhead projection animation/puppetry/slight of hand) and Elijah Bai Bangura who plays Weiss’ abusive father. This abuse led to a lifetime of PTSD and obsessive behaviour that is well suited to a career in scientific discovery, most notably into the tiny, but prodigious, organism known colloquially as the Water Bear that he discovers in a mucky puddle. These tiny creatures have extraordinary sex lives and have adaptive behaviour that makes them extremely good at survival. They’re survivors.

Director Hope Wishart creates a stunning microscopic panopticon on a suitably microscopic stage and the show’s designer, Enza Kim, inhabits her world, indeed her universe of wonder, by connecting deep space with deep earth and the world of microbes that live within humans and maintain their equilibrium. It’s a wonderful achievement, on a shoestring. Imagine what this company might go on to achieve with greater resources.

This could have ended up a real heap of mess, especially given the obvious budget limitations and with so many competing media, but it turns out to be a glorious, life-affirming study and a considerable work of art. The final sequence of projected film brings the whole together in a beautifully realised and deeply satisfying finale.

In the year of The Odyssey, this is arguably the most epic manifestation of them all.

A Microscopic Odyssey has finished its run