Barely had the curtain gone down, than I was rushing into the streets of Islington eulogizing about this beguiling rendering of one of Shakespeares most popular poems.

But I knew I would be easy to seduce. I spend my life going to the theatre because the thrill of watching good production blossom; the anticipation, the excitement and the gob-smacking wonder and brilliance of it all, can feel akin to falling in love and there is nothing more intoxicating and compelling than that.

Narrated by Shakespearian actor-extraordinaire Harriet Walter, who is accompanied by a guitarist, Venus and Adonis tells the story of the Godess of Love and Adonis, the stoic huntsman she chooses as her first mortal lover.

She becomes fixated with him, plucking him off his horse one day when he is out riding but he resists her charms while his stallion runs off to canoodle with a mare. This tiny vignette of horse-play forms its own captivating treatise on the nature of desire, with horse puppets the size of Shetland ponies cantering down the aisle and whinnieing on stage.

Nothing however will deter Venus from her quest, she is obsessed with Adonis and begs him not to go hunting for wild boar the following morning because she forsees his death. Her prophecy comes true and her inamorata dies. She then curses love, making sure that henceforth wherever it blooms it is entwined with pain and anguish.

The dramatic staging, dazzling you with feats of perspective and cunning is nothing short of spectacular and Director Gregory Doran and Lyndie Wright (Widow of John Wright who set up the company with her in 1961) have pulled of a chef d’oeuvre. This is a bawdy, funny and tragic tale that makes a mockery of the fools that (obsessive) love turns us into and provides solace for the love sick, romantic or broken-hearted. It is borderline erotic and pornographic in parts but it is also deeply affecting, no more so than when the grieving Venus laments the death of Adonis and curses love. Her words will leave you awe-struck.

There are a diverse range of puppets used in this dramatization; table top puppets, marionettes, shadow and rod puppets. But the main inspiration however comes from Japanese Bunraku puppetry, one of the most refined forms of puppetry in the world. These exquisite dolls are about a half to a third life size and are operated by three manipulators working in perfect unison.

Venus herself, as a carved puppet, possess a luminous beauty and her manipulators draw out incredibly precise and nuanced sentiments from her wooden frame so that you forget she is just an inanimate object and it is agonizing to watch her when she believes Adonis has escaped death’s clutches. She rejoices with giddy naivety only to have these hopes cruelly crushed when she comes across her lover’s broken and bleeding body on the forest floor.

During Shakespeare’s lifetime Venus and Adonis ran to sixteen editions and there is no doubt that this beautiful, bewitching gem of a production and its enduring themes will achieve similar notoriety for the Little Angel Theatre.

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