Far be it for this piece, a review of Basil Twist’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” to promote mind-altering substances. Society has good reasons for frowning on drug use, at Off-Broadway theaters no less than anyplace else. Still: If you have a bong, prepare to light it now.

The right question to ask is, “Why not create an elaborate underwater puppet show set to Berlioz’s score?” First performed in 1830, the symphony features an opium-addled composer’s obsessive pursuit of his dream girl. It also has its share of witches, executions, and other Romantic diversions. With material so naturally trippy, chemical enhancements are unnecessary, I’m glad to report. If the prospect of watching five puppeteers enact this story in a 1,000 gallon tank doesn’t make you shiver with decadence, take your stash elsewhere.

None of your Disney-ish anthropomorphized squid here. Mr. Twist tells the story with light, fabrics, and abstractions. There’s even a bubble eruption or two, but no trace of anything solid or substantial. The only evidence of the puppeteers you might catch is a line leading from the puppets out of view. (The puppets are the bait: You are the fish.)

Now and then, Mr. Twist overestimates the visual interest of a single spotlight that canvasses the pool, or asks us to find greater poetry in swirling fabric than seems plausible. Nevertheless, the show has an arresting beauty, one stunning image after another. The second movement, when the composer is tormented by images of his love at a swank ball, is particularly gorgeous. Delicately lit by Andrew Hill, the tank is full of colors, and not the Crayola 64 kind. When the music soars, and ineffable shapes glide through the water, you might be looking at heaven, or some alien planet’s idea of a morning commute.

If you have the misfortune to be scribbling notes while this is going on, the show will leave you sounding infantile (“twirly wavy”), commercial (“silky, viscous”), or like an overzealous reader of Gothic poetry (“iridescent raven feathers”). An abstract Romantic underwater pup pet show? It’s fair to say I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Be still, hard-core Pink Floyd fans. It’s true that the show here and there does recall a laser light show, as when it uses a prism, or fiber-op tic sprays. (Look to the sides of the theater in the last few movements: The light spilling out of the tank casts a Brakhage film, or something like it, on the walls.) But Mr. Twist has achieved something unique. The precision of his puppets and the sweep of Berlioz’s music achieve a gripping mix of spectacle and imagination, push and pull.

All plays ought to do this – few do. In fact, “Symphonie Fantastique” recalls most clearly another extravaganza. In “Cirque Orchestra” two years ago, the City Center audience listened to a live performance of Rimsky-Korsakov and other composers as dancers and acrobats swung overheard. That show, like this, left me humming with its overtones.

At the end of the hour-long spectacle, the puppeteers invite the audience to peek backstage, which is sporting of them. If anything, seeing the tired performers and soggy puppets under harsh work lights make the whole spectacle seem even more wondrous.

All of which makes “Symphonie Fantastique” the ideal way to inaugurate the new Dodger Stages complex. Situated underground, full of silver and gray, and crisscrossed with catwalks, the space is like a postmodern cell block, but only in the good ways. The designers make playful use of gilt mirrors, cozy book nooks, and lots of bright green. It will be a pleasure to visit the complex again, all the more so if the shows manage even half the ingenuity of this one.