It takes a few seconds before you notice the thing that dominates this quite incredible show. An absence that’s almost distractingly present.

Two figures, circus-trained performers Mathew Bolze and Hedi Thabet, appear on the bare stage moving on crutches in slow, careful circles. Dressed the same and mirroring each others stride, any difference in height or appearance seems initially inconsequential until you notice that Thabet only has one leg. In a second the scene takes on a totally different resonance – suddenly it is all about difference; what was only a few seconds previously the same identical movement, is split into two very different actions performed by two very different men. As if to underline this, a moment later, Bolze splits away with an ostentatious flip on his unneeded crutches, a dramatic gesture that beautifully re-enacts the splintering that had just taken place in my head.

This delicate half-hour long show exists in this gentle rhythm of difference, mimicry and separation; in the subtle interplay of power between these two sensitive performers. For the most part it is Thabet, the taller of the two, who is most the active. With startling athleticism, he bounds across the stage, charges fiercely at Bolze or, quite remarkably, unaided by crutches carries him on his shoulders, spinning him across the space. And yet at any time, with a single, gentle tug on the empty leg of his friend’s trousers, Bolze reiterates the disability, with all its associated baggage of passivity and vulnerability, that Thabet’s spectacular physicality does so much to efface.

What makes this show so fascinating is that despite both the performer’s undoubted athetletic skill, the stage never becomes just a platform for a series of gymnastic feats. Beneath their movement is always a tension; an eroticism, a competitiveness and a sense of humour. This becomes most apparent as the show builds towards a beautiful piece of clowning in which, sitting on a chair together, the two performer’s legs entwine, twisting in and out of each other till you can no longer tell which belongs to whom. One moment they are an absurd three-legged two-headed creature, the next Bolze suddenly appears to have what can only be described as an enormous cock hanging between his legs. Then suddenly in another of the show’s breathtaking reversals, Thabet finds himself sitting quietly still and alone, with two legs rather than one beneath him. Like the very best clowning it is genuinely very funny and yet subtly, beautifully sad.

This is a frankly wonderful show. Complex, sensuous, subtle yet genuinely breathtakingly spectacular. A wordless, thoughtful exploration of power and love and trust between two men who are so similar and yet so crucially different.

The London International Mime Festival runs until 25 January 2009.