Say what you like about the National Theatre of Scotland, you cannot fault it for the breadth of its repertoire. From Euripides to Gregory Burke, from graphic novels to devised site-specific work, it has been there and done that. Even by its standards, though, backing Matthew Lenton's tiny Vanishing Point company in an adaptation of a piece of surreal cult Czech animation is a long shot.

Little Otik, Jan Svankmayer's part-animated, part-live-action 2001 film, is about a couple who cannot have a child. Instead, in a collision between Yerma, Little Shop of Horrors and the Brothers Grimm, they adopt a piece of wood that not only comes alive, but turns into a man-eating monster. There's also the precocious young daughter of the sensible couple next door and the dirty old man who pursues her, not to mention the gardening matriarch with the prodigiously fecund cabbage patch. Believe me, weird doesn't begin to cover it.

Lenton credits his leading actor, Sandy Grierson, and the rest of the company, as well as himself, for the adaptation. Between them they have burrowed deep into the various subtexts to introduce a coherent framework of ideas around the theme of fertility and growth. The stage is covered with rich dark loam from which things sprout; the back wall is a kaleidoscope of complex projections (by Finn Ross for Mesmer) from trees to sperm to the very ordinary town in which these very extraordinary events are played out.

Having children drives you mad, as any parent knows, but not having them drives you madder still. Louise Ludgate, as the desperate would-be mother, plays her anguish absolutely straight in the midst of the bizarre imagery, which makes her adoption of the tree stump not only almost credible but oddly touching.

But what emerges at the centre of the piece is not so much the travails of her and her husband (Grierson), but the coming to maturity of Elspeth, the little girl next door. Rebecca Smith, in an astonishingly assured professional debut, catches that moment of standing upon the brink of womanhood, awkward, knowing, part-Lolita, part-philosopher. She is the one who asks the difficult questions; she moves from innocence to knowingness.

The rest of the production is technically impeccable, for Lenton is exactly the kind of director who has most to gain from the enhanced resources that the National Theatre of Scotland can make available to him.

Box office: 0141-429 0022, to May 31, and then touring Scotland and to the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, until June 21. www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

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