Review: Profound, bewildering and tense - this play speaks to us all

The Valley of Astonishment is based in part on a 12th century Sufi poem, which tells of a journey made by a flock of birds through seven valleys to find the magical Phoenix. One of the valleys, the Valley of Astonishment and Bewilderment, belongs only to those who have found unity within themselves.

The characters here, ordinary people who experience extraordinary states of mind naturally through synaesthesia, hyper-memory, or proprioception, have passed into the Valley of Astonishment. For them, life is super-real. Each lives in a strange relationship to the world. But their gifts come at a price. One sees sounds, but has to hide his abilities for fear of ridicule; another works in a freak show, her mind cluttered with things she cannot forget; a third has to painfully learn how to move his own body through acts of observation and will.

The play is really a sequence of scenes loosely based around a fictional Department of Cognitive Science, where people with extraordinary mental capacities are studied. It has a documentary feel to it, which deliberately runs counter to its surreal subject matter. Art and science here function in uneasy tension: the one making whole what the other divides.

Profound, bewildering, beautifully staged and performed, this is a play with a cerebral punch, brought to the stage by people who know a thing or two about experience. At its heart is a deep compassion for people who see things differently, which when it comes down to it, is all of us.

Nick Le Mesurier