5 March 2016. The Encounter at the Barbican

This is the extraordinary tale of Loren McIntyre, a National Geographic photographer, who gets lost in the Amazon while seeking to photograph the Mayoruna tribe. He lives with them until a great flood takes him downriver on a raft back to 'civilization'.

During his time with the tribe, McIntyre has to communicate without language until he comes across Cambio whose family had been killed by Portuguese explorers and who had ended up with the radio operator - hence the name. He has experiences that are never made entirely clear as to whether they are real or hallucination - for example one of the tribe tricks him into going on a Jaguar hunt, only to abandon him as he falls into a thorn bush, his wounds subsequently becoming infected by flesh eating maggots. Luckily he is found and cured and the man who tricked him is seen dead, himself being eaten by insects.

All in all, I did not know quite what to make of it. We seem to be presented with some sort of profound truths that the Mayoruna are privy to. For example, the need to burn all your possessions from time time in order to move on (an idea I could relate to and which reminded me of an installation in london in which the artist chopped up all his belongings) and the idea that there is some sort of alternative concept of time that can exist in parallel to our linear concept. But we are all born; then live; then die.

I was also not entirely sure of the role of Simon McBurney who narrated the story. There were two massive teleprompts suspended from the balcony to help him and a lot of technical wizardry that he demonstrated at the outset. However, for me this had the effect of blurring how much he was doing on the night and how much was recorded and inserted by his assistants. It led me to ponder how much we needed night after night performances - what the live performance added.

Although well received by the critics, The Guardian's Michael Billington also questioned the hippie proposition that the tribe is the keeper of eternal truths to which  our civilization has denied us access. I also could not entirely see the point of the intrusion of McBurney's cute daughter from time to time during the story-telling. Were we in the theatre or was he recounting something that had taken place in his house? On re-listening via a podcast, I began to find the whole think a bit irritating unfortunately.