Is going to the theatre simply about what you see and hear on a stage inside a building, or part of a wider experience? At Leicester Haymarket, a theatre with a new sense of energy about it, questions such as this are being asked. The current show in the main house - inspired by Somadeva Suri's AD 950 Jain epic - is the centrepiece that has led to spin-offs to a number of related projects, including a series of symposiums. This is a theatre that is attempting to beat with the heart of its own city.
Walk into the building and you are engulfed by a different world. The foyers are filled with artworks made by children and local artists, and in the studio you can embark on a walk-through journey back into the Iranian childhood of the Haymarket's trainee director Nazli Tabatabai. An interesting experiment in form, which embraces both installation and performance, it is well worth a look.
As is Bali - the Sacrifice, the piece that inspired all this. Not least because you have probably never seen anything quite like it. Drawing on myth to ask questions about religious tolerance and violence, it is both quite alien and completely accessible.
One night, drawn by the beautiful sound of a man singing, the queen slips from her bed and into the arms of the voice's owner - the king's elephant keeper, played by Naseeruddin Shah. When the king, who adores his wife, discovers the pair, crisis ensues and the history of their marriage unravels: the king's renunciation of blood sacrifice for his wife's Jainism, the queen's inability to have a child and the pressures brought to bear by the king's mother - the original mother-in-law from hell.
Nona Shepperd's canny, beautifully acted production offers both the simplicity of myth and a touch of Bollywood as tragedy and comedy, the universal and the deeply personal, spark off each other. Every time you are about to snort with laughter, you are stunned into silence by the realisation of what is at stake.
This is by no means a great play, not even a particularly good one, but the experience is greater than the sum of its parts, and it is as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking.
Until Saturday. Box office: 0116-253 9797.
