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Touring puppeteers Handspring bring their much-lauded latest production to Wales this week.

The internationally acclaimed South African company were the creative genius behind the huge horse puppets in the award winning and long-running West End adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse, where the astonishing life-sized steeds are beloved characters in their own right.

Their latest effort, Woyzeck on the Highveld, reworks the German writer Georg Büchner’s tragic tale of an ordinary German soldier struggling in an unsympathetic world in the 1800s, transposing it to 1950s Johannesburg.

In this version Woyzeck is a migrant worker struggling to make sense of the uncaring world around him and his relationships with others, especially his wife and her betrayal. It deals with the themes of social displacement, jealousy and eventually murder. The Johannesburg of that era makes a poignant setting for a story where there exists such a chasm between the fortunate and the not so fortunate.

The story is told via a mix of puppetry, live performance and film and was originally created in 1992, then directed and designed by the famous artist and film-maker William Kentridge.

Puppets in Woyzeck on the Highveld

The 2011 production, which began at the Barbican in London in September, is directed by Luc de Wit and marks the first collaboration between the Cape Town based company and Kentridge.

Most of the puppets are two thirds life-size and have been developed using Kentridge’s original charcoal animations, which also star. They are operated via rods by the actors to help tell the story and although the cast for this production does not boast a faithful horse, it does include a miniature rhino!

The puppets’ presence helps to accentuate the darker moments of the play and also to transport the audience to the era in question.

The tour is produced by UK Arts International and is supported by Arts Council Wales and the Welsh government.

Handspring was founded in 1981 and has since earned international renown for using puppets to explore theatre in a South African context. The company won the Olivier Award, Evening Standard award and Critics’ Circle Theatre award for best design for War Horse; they have since won five Tony Awards in the US.

Woyzeck on the Highveld is at the Wales Millennium Centre on October 25 and 26, with a matinee on Wednesday at 1.30pm. For tickets visit .

It then moves to the Aberystwyth Arts Centre from Friday 28 and Saturday 29 October, with performances at 7.30pm and a matinee on Saturday at 2pm. For tickets visit .