Fraser Smith Star rating: ***

We all know what a typical opera contains: singers and musicians portraying a story through sung dramatic text - simple. Add hand-crafted wooden puppets from South African Handspring Puppet Company and you have something very different.

This take on Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, directed by William Kentridge, adds a new dynamic to the art form. The audience sees the singers enfolded by the orchestra on the semi-circular stage. Puppeteers are also on stage at all times, each controlling an individual wooden character and following their corresponding singer. Doesn't this make the stage seem very crowded? Strangely enough, no. So beautifully intricate are the puppets, so precise yet lifelike is their movement, that they are engrossing, and the singers and operators fade into the background.

Therein lies the problem with the performance. There are three main points of focus; the puppets, the surtitle screens and the backdrop, showing an amazing blend of animated charcoal drawings and real-life footage. If you become engrossed by any one of these creative wonders, you soon lose the thread of the story, just as if you focus on the English translation, you miss out on what makes the opera unique and special.

With unspectacular but faultless performances by the singers and musicians, you would think this would be a must-see show. Perhaps, but despite a clever and innovative performance, so abundant is the artistic material that it is too much to take in, which ultimately ruins the show's attempt at originality and brilliance.

Sponsored by Standard Life. Fraser Smith is a pupil at Boroughmuir High School in Edinburgh and this review was submitted as part of The Herald Young Critics project, which is run in partnership with the Edinburgh International Festival.