A Surreal Spaghetti Western With Visual Playfulness

At the Edinburgh international festival, French performer Olivier Rannou's family-friendly spaghetti western "Hostile" is a surreal, wordless ride blending clowning, mime and visual trickery. The lone cowboy, initially as stranded as a Samuel Beckett anti-hero, is marooned in a desert with a water bottle full of sand and skeletal remains. Through movement and sound, Rannou portrays a wanted man on the run, facing hallucinatory dripping water, a rattlesnake fight (conjured from string) and a saloon shootout.

Émilie Rougier's electronic compositions charge the atmosphere, while lighting by Alan Floc'h and Alexandre Musset evokes glaring sun and eerie night. Produced by French company Bakélite, the show features inventive props and a set that morphs into elaborate objects, including a wooden horse that comes to life. It amuses but bemuses as it doesn't explain itself.

At Church Hill theatre, Edinburgh, until 11 August. A highlight is the visual playfulness of the set, also designed by Rannou; the original table morphs into other objects, ever bigger and more elaborate, including at one point a wooden horse which comes to life and slowly clops off the stage.