WITH their own peculiar alchemy, Macnas have managed to transform an empty warehouse, Galway's new Black Box Performance Space, into a magic lantern of colour and light. Opening the 19th Galway Arts Festival with their new production, Rhymes From The Ancient Marina, they have created a show that is a fitting celebration of their 10th anniversary.

Adapting one of the best known poems in the English language for a promenade style performance was clearly going to be risky, but the material is so rich and the staging so confident that, for the most part, director Rod Goodall succeeds.

Opening at a 1950s Irish wedding, complete with drunken, screeching bridesmaids, the mood changes when the strange figure of the Ancient Mariner (Midie Corcoran) appears, compelled to tell his tale to the father of the bride and transport him back to the late 18th century.

While this transition between two different pasts is not a comfortable one, we are soon beguiled by the stage craft, which more than compensates for the episodic form that at times threatens to become desultory. This is a matter of pacing more than anything when the gaps between the set pieces are tightened up, it will be even more effective.

The audience flows from a side stage into the main space, forced constantly to move around during the 80 minute show as the Mariner's schooner voyages through realms of ice, heat and rain, beautifully realised by Ger Sweeney's design. Trish Forde's script adheres closely to the action of Coleridge's poem, while the players elaborate and expand on scenes using mime, movement and song. John Dunne's original score is chillingly atmospheric at times, in particular during the build up to the slaying of the albatross (Zoe Maistre), but towards the end becomes almost cloying.

That the final scenes are so thumpingly moralistic and guilt ridden can only be blamed on Coleridge himself perhaps it heralds a new departure for Macnas as they contemplate their second decade?