THE acclaimed Irish theatre company Blue Raincoat are old friends of the Tron Theatre. The Sligo-based group have visited the Glasgow playhouse numerous times over the years (their remarkable production of Ionesco’s absurdist classic The Chairs, which played the Tron back in 2012, continues to live vividly in the memory).

Blue Raincoat’s fantastic facility in language combines beautifully with a distinctive visual aesthetic and a remarkable capacity in theatrical movement. In their latest work, The Last Pearl, it is the visual and physical aspects of their work that come to the fore.

The piece draws together evocative puppetry, skilled shadow theatre, exquisite movement and fabulous lighting. It tells the story of M, a pearl diver whose community is on the frontline of the climate crisis.

We see M in shadow through the window of her house. By way of a gorgeous miniature set, we know that her home is built on stilts above the sea where she makes her increasingly precarious living.

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We also know, from one particularly powerful scene, that many of her neighbours’ lost their elevated houses to an unusually ferocious storm.

The ecological theme is pursued most affectingly in the scenes in which we see M (represented by marvellous puppets in the style of Japanese animated dolls, known as bunraku) diving for pearls.

The increasing scarcity of the diver’s quarry is due to ever-increasing marine pollution, which is represented by the discarded bicycle parts, cars tyres and other human-made detritus that she encounters on the seabed.

There are different sized puppets to represent M in different contexts. When she dives on the sea floor, she is represented by a large, skilfully manipulated puppet.

However, when she makes her way back to the surface, swimming in a straight, vertical line, a smaller puppet is used. Her ascent is illuminated by a shaft of light.

Assisted by atmospheric sound and music, the image of the ascending pearl fisher is memorable in its simplicity and beauty. The constant gorgeousness of the show’s aesthetic exists in deliberately paradoxical relation to the bleakness of its catastrophic subject.

The defiant images of M during her pregnancy and, later, teaching her dying craft to her daughter suggest some, slight hope.

The play itself appears like a shimmering light in an ecocidal darkness.

The invocation of the pearl fisher places a timeless and romantic symbol against a very current chaos.

From Shipbuilding – that poignant, soulful song by Blue Raincoat’s compatriot Elvis Costello (“we could be diving for pearls”) – to the self-conscious stylishness of Glasgow rock band The Pearlfishers, our culture has long turned to the metaphor of pearl fishing as an elevation of the human spirit.

This gloriously tactile, defiantly analogue work of theatre contrasts magnificently with the burgeoning virtualisation of human culture. It is truly a thing of beauty.

The Last Pearl’s Scottish sojourn (to the Tron and the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh) is, sadly, over. Let’s hope that it won’t be long before the outstanding Blue Raincoat return to our shores.