THE DIRECTOR of the Russian physical theatre troupe Derevo, Anton Adassinski, saunters over with the graceful ease of movement particular of dancers. With his translucent bald head, shaved-off eyebrows and piercing blue eyes, he has an otherworldy quality about him which makes it difficult to be angry about waiting fifteen minutes for him to arrive.

A few more minutes while he labours over his first of many roll-ups and he is ready to begin. The problem is that, for Adassinski, it’s not ‘good to talk’.

“Newspapers, TV, radio, they all create rules, it gives critics such power. You start to feel that words just trick people, especially about politics, that our culture is about tricking people.” He speaks slowly in a thick Russian accent and with a blank expression on his face, so different from the vibrant emotion he expresses in the show. For him words are just another way to alienate people from one another, a dishonest, lazy way to communicate and the root of many of the world’s problems, specifically war. “It’s the end of the world. People always afraid to say we are close but we are! At the moment there are 38 wars, 38?! I just counted.” As you do.

A deep drag on his fag and his mind wanders. “Life is lonely now. People are like islands. We need to relax, sleep during the day, take at least an hour’s lunch break.”

Adassinski speaks with the quiet confidence of a man with a reputation for being brilliant but eccentric. Under his direction since 1988, Derevo have performed at the Fringe three times to great critical acclaim. Their latest offering, the spectacularly innovative and hypnotic Islands in the Stream performed at St Stephens Church, is selling out fast – perhaps surprising for over an hour of purely physical, surrealist theatre.

Of course Adassinski has his own cryptic explanation for its success. “Simplicity and beauty. What’s more beautiful than just nature, just the ocean? People say ‘it’s so romantic, we already know all about the ocean’, but no, no we don’t, we must repeat ourselves again and again and be honest about it.”

Like many performers, ‘playing’ as he likes to call it, is a way of working through his problems, a mode of understanding himself. Paradoxically though, the more he does it the less he understands – an inconsistency he finds “fantastic”.

“Theatre of the 20th century is dead and people are tired with speaking, they’re tired with words. Now we have to wait and see what happens next. Derevo are in middle like a bridge between that hope and the dead body of old theatre. I have one aim which is to show people there is another reality, to think outside the frame of words. To create another reality on stage, and without any drugs!”

When pressed to explain the title he adds, “When I was young Russian schools were very specific so my mother always gave me other books. One was Hemmingway’s novel called Islands in Stream. This is 25 years ago but it changed me and I still remember the first sentence from book.” This from the man who detests words? Anton Adassinski smiles wryly at his own contradiction, blatantly not caring and then retreats back into his silence.