The performer/technicians were sitting patiently on one of the many packing crates scattered on the stage, behind what looked like an architect’s model of an office complex or railway station. Wires and technology were visible too.

The soundtrack began, revealing that the cityscape was in fact the insides of the narrator’s dead mother’s much loved piano – an instrument which he had conscripted for his art, releasing it from mourning and giving it new life within the artist’s imagination.

The first animal to be revealed was a moth – apparently crafted from bits of piano, it flapped its mechanical wings gently while the puppeteer moved it about the space.

A bug with radio-aerial antennae chirruped as an articulated caterpillar arched its back and made its way across a beautifully constructed packing-crate branch.

The creatures were intriguing curiosities and I was fascinated to see what they could do. There were moments of brilliance when Savanna became a transformative piece of theatre: when a flock of birds were expertly manipulated on long sticks, or when the emotions of a baby elephant facing its dying mother were delicately, mechanically expressed.

As the soundtrack explains, Savanna exists between memories and fantasy. Memories of a dead mother woven into the physicality of her piano and memories within the piano itself – from fingerprints left on its ivory keys to memories in the vibrations of the strings – now transformed into creatures, music and scenarios imagined by the artist.

It also exists in a place between puppetry and automata and this is where it was sometimes uncomfortable: the tenderness of movement of Amit Drori’s exquisite handcrafted mechanical creatures worked better when the humans kept their hands off. Shifts from remote-controller to puppeteer to a performer interacting with the creatures were often distracting.

Amit Drori’s Savanna is an ambitious project exploring the edges of automata and puppetry. I very much look forward to seeing what the company will do next.