Hou Hou Shahou's Chorus of Descent

As audiences take to their seats for Babolin Theatre's latest production, accompanied by the ambient piano strains of a young man in grotesque drag, they would be forgiven for thinking they were about to witness a stage adaptation of Chris Morris's dark television series Jam.

The performance's introductory scene does little to abate any initial sense of nightmarish foreboding, as the cast confrontationally assert their role as cleaners whose duty it is to scrub clean their patrons' minds. It's a thrill to watch youth theatre display such caustic conviction, even if the unmistakably cocksure opening provokes concern that the ensemble won't live up to their bombast.

Though Hou Hou Shahou's Chorus of Descent, essentially the tragic tale of a club-footed waif, stays true to its early dystopian promise, it is far from a mere exercise in 'edgy', dark theatre. Instead, the piece's mood assumes a sort of emotional schizophrenia.

Clipped, rhyming dialogue fragments, for example, veer wildly from menacing to playful, occasionally calling to mind Under Milk Wood in their inventive and celebratory use of language in all its bawdy, pathos-ridden glory. The female caricatures provided by the male cast, meanwhile, hint at an unsettling sense of displaced understanding and logic while calling to mind Pythonesque humour at its broadest.

Established in 2005, Babolin Theatre is intended to serve as a "training ground for young performers applying for acting courses at drama schools and universities." Given the watertight ensemble performances on display this year, one wonders what more the current troupe could possibly learn. Sickeningly accomplished, captivating storytelling.