One of the safer bets in theatre is that whenever you see Alexander Berlage’s name in the director credit line, you’ll see something on stage you haven’t seen before.

Back at the Old Fitzroy this time – where he came to critical attention with a brilliant and ludicrous There will be a Climax in 2018 – he applies his considerable technical and imaginative imagination to Sonder, a one-man musical, and turns it into a visual stunner.

Riki Lindsey in Sonder. Photo © Jessie Obialor

Sonder is the story of Romeo (writer-performer Riki Lindsey), a gay Māori man confronting past trauma, shifting identities and the end of consuming love affair that has taken him to Berlin. The story, drawing on lived experience, is related in direct address, movement (some of it based the traditional Māori martial art Mau Rākau) and in a suite of soulful songs (by Mitchell Sloan) sung live over pulsing pre-recorded backing tracks.

As Lindsey performs, Berlage activates a moving sculpture – a mobile, really – of reflecting shards, each one controlled by electric winches mounted above. In motion, the effect is mesmerising: at times it looks like Lindsey is at the centre of an exploding world, or a mirror breaking in extreme sol-mo.

It also has the effect of trapping Lindsey within it – which may serve well as a visual metaphor but also places a barrier between performer and audience. We want to empathise with the person onstage, with his story of rejection and efforts at reconciliation, but the gorgeous silent contraption around him is too dominant a player in the drama. Lindsey needs to up the intensity to break free of it.

Sonder plays at the Old Fitzroy Theatre until 23 May.