TAMTAM's Island, which ran earlier this week, was delightful child's play, a miniature story of heroic struggle and quest that eschewed conventional illusion by letting us see the "puppeteers" throughout. The Dutch company's breathtaking Obstacles is almost entirely different, though, it shares the earlier show's visual and thematic preoccupation - humanity's relationship with landscape - and a single recognisable word: "mama".

Obstacles is ostentatiously cinematic, with all the action taking place in a little screenshaped space cut out of a large black board. Within it, astonishing effects of light, music, sound and movement turn mundane objects into figures in an episodic - even disjointed - history of life.

In spite of the ladder on the "stage" at the start, this wordless version of evolution has little to do with ascent. Instead, it's grimly cyclical, running from primordial slime to post apocalyptic primordial desert. Much of the content may be lost on the eight year olds in the audience, but they'll enjoy moments, of stark humour and startling imagination; anyway, drifting in and out of a play is a perfectly valid childhood pleasure.

Don't believe the publicity stuff about mankind not playing "the leading part" in this story. Yes, half the show's hour dips happily into biological issues such as predation, sexual reproduction, ice ages, the relationship between insects and flowering plants but even that, is "stage managed" by two little human figures beloved by the audience.

The rest is not about life's evolution at all; it's a whirl wind tour - complete with flash camera - of human culture and society, culminating, in that catastrophic ecological punchline. But don't get hung up on the familiar message; just enjoy this beautiful, astonishing piece of mini theatre.