By Lucy Komisar

It starts with cavemen with bows and arrows. Stick and string become like bass. A stick turns into a musical pipe. A clap is rhythm. A move to wood and metal. Then a bagpipe with a symbol of the British lion.

This production directed by Richard Navarro at the Avignon Theater Festival OFF is delightful and fascinating and shows how music came from paleo grottos to the electronic sphere. It is clever, witty, and quite an original.

The key players are Sylvain Rabourdin, Hél¨ne Duret and Charly Astie. The music and the voices are excellent.

It‘s Rome, a rose window, a lute, a lady in a red gown. In Italian, “Che bella,” how beautiful. And “Love is an adventure.” There is baroque comedy. A lady says “Si, si” but she means the panecote, a nice desert, not the violinist.

In Venice‘s Piazza degli Dogi, the man puts on clerical black, she dresses as a nun, and the flute plays “The Four Seasons.” Later, a harpsicord plays romantic Beethoven to Brahms.

How do we get from there to klezmer, country and banjo? (Interesting connection, isn‘t it.)

Then, “It‘s my cabin,” a woman playing a jazz clarinet and hunched over walking: “It‘s a long road, it‘s a long long road.”

A guitar: “Come on baby,” a saxophone: “I look at all the lonely people.” Beetles.

Clever ingenious. Audience loved this. So did I.

Zorozora: History of Music. Directed by Richard Navarro. Le Rouge Gorge, Place de l‘Amirande, Avignon. Avignon Theater Festival OFF, July 6 to 29, 2018.