This enterprising Australian-Indonesian collaboration at the Belfast festival, telling the traditional tale of the beautiful Sita's abduction by the demon Rawanna, defies expectation and received wisdom.
At first, the familiar images present themselves in spectacular fashion - a Balinese gamelan, its players clad in richly embroidered purple satin; a quintet of dextrous puppeteers, wearing shimmering gold and green; the delicate, intricate oriental shadow puppets, beginning their seductive dance, while a brazier of fire blazes behind them.
But, as one gradually begins to realise, tradition is what may inform this London International Festival of Theatre presentation, but only in the way that the past always and universally informs and influences present and future events.
Worked in with the glorious sounds of the gamelan are the improvised jazz rhythms of the Australain Art Orchestra and the Irish-inspired vocals of Katie Noonan; punctuating the ancient tale and the fictional wanderings of two hobbit-like servants, are a welter of computer-animated and film depictions of urban decay, political oppression, popular uprising, commercial exploitation, environmental destruction.
For, under the ambitious direction of Nigel Jamieson - he who directed the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games Opening Ceremony - and the flamboyant design of Julian Crouch, this is a journey from Indonesia's past to turbulent present.
It has to be said that it all makes for a not-entirely entertaining experience.
But it is no bad thing for audiences to have to put in a bit of work, too, and the ultimate feeling is of satisfaction and wonder and of wanting to press the rewind button to catch up.