On a darkened tabletop facing the audience, a tiny shaft of light clicks on. Beneath the lamp stands a gummy bear, a couple of centimetres high. This show is diminutive, both in length (30 minutes) and in physical scale, but the topics it tackles are the biggest of all. For dawn is breaking on the Gummy Bears’ camp… the dawn of their final day.

It didn’t have to be this way. Even now, the Gummy Bears could choose peace with their neighbours the Dinosaurs, an honourable partnership based on cooperation and trade. But for some reason – and understanding that reason lies at the heart of the show – the Bears have gone to war, in full knowledge that it means their certain annihilation.

The human performers, Valentina Fadda and Leonardo Tomasi, handle their miniscule marionettes with deft precision. The tiniest of reading-lights pick out the diminutive figures, making each one literally glow with personality and inner meaning. Later, blood-red light-bars reveal the epic sweep of the battlefield, before the doomed Bears fade into the darkness once again.

If this all sounds a touch ridiculous, be assured that it’s meant to be. The production is fully aware of its inherent comedy, and the commentary – performed in Italian with English subtitles – wittily juxtaposes heroic oratory with references to fruity flavours. Yet there’s a genuine sense of tragedy as the Bears confront their doom: as Raspberry Red pushes thoughts of past contentment aside, or Apple Green bids a poignant farewell to everything she’s ever known.

The terrifying thing is that they all accept this, see no off-ramp from their road to self-destruction. And throughout, we ask ourselves… why? The Bears are the belligerents here, the Dinosaurs an amusing parody of harmlessly bloated bureaucracy. We do learn a reason by the end, though the answer poses still more questions about the years or centuries that have gone before.

But the true message we leave with is more devastating still: a theory not just of how wars continue, but why people and nations turn inwards to define themselves in toxic terms. Comic, mournful, and weirdly beautiful, The Gummy Bears’ Great War packs an outsize punch for all its miniature scale.