Wildcard TC's promenade performance, at the Wycombe Swan Town Hall, is a remarkably economical, strikingly visual and imaginative dramatisation of Longfellow's epic poem about the life of Hiawatha, 'deliverer' of the Native American people.
The cast of three, led by the inspirational director Andrew Potter, cope well with the unremitting beat of Longfellow's blank verse - harsh iambs which pound out like a war drum across the prairie.
But creative, often simple visuals bring

this alive and complement the remarkably energetic acting from Tara Hendry (brilliant as an assortment of animals and Hiawatha's wife) and Michael Rochester as the hero.
Hiawatha's initial battle with his cold-hearted father the West Wind Mudjekeewis, is played out through a dancing clash of swishing flags, and a similar device is also used to portray heightened passion, with consummation a warm enfolding of cloth.
As Hiawatha pursues the various labours set down by his undefeated father, many more moments of delicate intimacy are balanced with the grand stories of valour and spiritual and earthly growth common to many ancient myths. Humour is also wrung (especially by Potter) with skill and

Hendry's original music presents a haunting and unobtrusive backdrop.
For this is a beautifuly re-created magical world, and it is pehaps a tribute to the effectiveness of the performances that the concluding arrival of the white man - accompanied by the cry for racial justice by Martin Luther King - is as genuinely dramatic as it is rightly political,
The impending threat is never absent from the minds of an audience armed with hindsight - but for 90 minutes one genuinely feels transported to Dakota country and the groves of Tuscaloosa.