By the time the anticipated act of violence occurs, Stephens has laid out a whole smorgasbord of potential contributing factors: unrequited teenage love; body image issues; the spectre of trouble at home; alcohol; an environment in which parents and teachers allow sixth formers to believe a C grade in an English mock means they’ll “never get out of Stockport”; plus Bennet Francis (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), a bully whose aloof disregard for those he hurts is worse by far than actual malice, and whose effect on the group debunks with ease that maxim about sticks and stones so beloved of adult authority figures.

Yet Stephens’ real achievement is that despite all the factors presented to us, when our minds reach, as they tend to do, for a simple, catch-all way to explain the tragedy, there isn’t one. It doesn’t even feel satisfactory to conclude, “it was probably a combination of all those things”.

As an examination of the overly simplistic adult tendency to classify teenage behaviour as the direct result of easily identifiable causes like alcohol, pornography and violent media, Punk Rock delivers; though no alternative theory is forthcoming, unless you count, “some people are just broken”.

Stephens’ love of language carries him away into the odd overwrought line, and Director Sarah Frankcom’s love of Stephens’ language leads to characters delivering extended passages straight out front, while the characters they’re supposedly addressing slouch behind them in a symmetrical chorus-line chevron. The script is excellent – funny in a terrifying and guilt-ridden kind of way – and it deserves to be placed centre stage, but such unnatural blocking actually distracts from the words. Or is that too simple, too immediate an explanation…?

It’s a brave choice from Wild Wood Theatre to tell this vast wonder tale in its entirety, resisting the audience’s expectation (some of it vociferously expressed) of a conventional happy ending about halfway through the narrative. But if the smaller folk don’t necessarily follow every enchanted twist of the story, there’s no doubt of their fascinated belief in the russet and gold play-world conjured up by the show’s two performers.

Telling the tale, Danny Scheinmann is a bright, confiding, and ever-so-slightly naughty presence. He’s especially wondrous when transforming himself into an ill-tempered crone (‘I hate being a servant’) grudgingly entering the world of royal espionage, or Baba Yaga’s hut capering gleefully on nimble chicken legs. His creations are horrific and charming and funny, offering the comforting reassurance that even Baba Yaga doesn’t stay terrifying for long. And violinist Heather Cowen combines sensitive musicianship with a wide-eyed quality of listening that casts a folkloric glamour upon the unravelling fable.

The audience are (largely) delighted to get in on the action, singing and miming along with Vasilissa’s midnight labours. There’s much laughter, a few tears, some hiding at the scary bits – and the show takes it all in its confident stride. Warm, wise and beguiling, The Frog Princess is fifty minutes of rough magic that takes its audience on an epic imaginative journey.

Out of the resulting babel, a story emerges with the stark simplicity of silent-movie melodrama. We watch the frenetic futility with which ashen-faced hero Akakki struggles to ascend the ladder of bureaucratic lackeydom. The object of his desire is Natalia, who submits with absent, loose-limbed vacancy to the passionless contortions of their dreamlike pas-de-deux, but who can’t resist the aphrodisiac allure of the expensive overcoat that endlessly eludes her shabby admirer.

The appalling details of Gogol’s comfortless fantasy are brought to life with mordant meticulousness in a bravura display of deadpan clowning. Akakki’s parents’ eyes gleam with frigid disapproval as they stare down from a family portrait upon his shamefacedly squalid erotic misadventures. The walls of his bedroom expand and contract in the claustrophobic rhythm of his thwarted desires. The office where he slaves is a bedlam of flashing lights, incomprehensible orders and paperwork flung about to ever-more-manic musical accompaniment. And the piteous disintegration of his one, unsatisfactory, overcoat is documented with inch-perfect precision.

If all this sounds depressing, the effect – strangely – isn’t. Amit Lahav’s company bring wit and compassion and an essential lightness of touch to this grimmest of stories, aided by Ti Green’s bleakly playful set and some glorious lighting from James Farncombe. The Overcoat may be a bruisingly apt portrait of a society fixated on acquisition as an index of self-worth, but it’s also a bizarrely uplifting testimony to the human capacity for sympathy and dreams.

Georgia McGuinness‘ ingenious exploded flat-pack of a set creates wonderfully unpredictable landscapes of domestic discovery. A row of white doors is rife with terrifying possibilities, with insistent buzzers and threatening voices on the other side. However, while a coolly ambient soundtrack and some slickly abstracted choreography are admittedly stylish, they also tend to cocoon the young cast from the challenge of establishing empathetic links beyond the fourth wall.

Some of the actors do manage slip past the show’s stylistic barriers and make a real emotional connection with the audience. Ben Presley and Rebecca Smith make a touchingly unlikely pair, painstakingly negotiating friendship amid the debris of a catastrophic party. And Ryan and Scott Fletcher are achingly plausible as estranged brothers, trading hyperbolic slanders with hesitant, hopeful longing.

It’s evident that Vicky Featherstone’s company have absorbed some unsettling statistics about the likely futures of ‘looked after’ children. But 365 sometimes seems more like an assemblage of data than a revealing dramatic exploration of young people’s lives and struggles. The framing device of an adult voice-over places the audience in uncomfortable complicity with grown-up authority, and the show’s obvious social concern eventually provokes little more than a state of chilly, depressed voyeurism. All too often it feels like we’re spying on these kids’ struggles through a two-way mirror as we observe, without entering or sharing, their remarkable and troubled private worlds.

365 at the Lyric Hammersmith from the 8th to the 27th of September.
Directed by Vicky Featherstone
Written by David Harrower

Photo Top: Simone James. Photo by Pete Dibdin.

Photo Bottom: Ryan Fletcher, Rebecca Smith and Helen Mallon. Photo by Pete Dibdin.

Mário de Andrade’s epic tale follows the picaresque adventures of its eponymous “hero without a character” whose amorphous, amoral nature soaks up and reflects the different creatures and situations he encounters. He’s a childlike, foul-mouthed, sexually-voracious, innocent chameleon, whose wide-eyed wonder at the monsters of the Brazilian forest is matched by his incomprehension at the negotiable niceties of a smart, intellectual dinner-party.

The Dende Collective uses physicality, multi-lingual storytelling and puppetry to follow the shifting registers of Andrade’s avant-garde text. This vigorous, vibrant, culturally-diverse ensemble seem happiest at the mythic end of the narrative spectrum, revelling in their collective play amidst richly imagined jungle landscapes, filled with wild beasts, gaudily feathered birds, and cut-out silver stars. A massive, malevolent cobra makes a sinuous, sinister entrance, and phallus-fondling flesh-eater Currupira is a marvellous, half-human, half-monstrous, epicurean charmer.

The company have been working with the Little Angel, and it shows in some detailed, touching puppetry, especially the tiny child whose death draws a note of genuine grief out of Macunaíma’s carnivalesque chaos. More conventionally realistic segments are less successful: the framing device of a dinner party celebrating Modern Art Week is explained at some length, and to little dramatic effect. It’s when the frocks come off, and the forest invades the dining-room, that this wild, tough, wandering story really comes to life.

The show in its current form covers roughly half of Macunaíma’s adventures, with a cliff-hanging ending that leaves you longing to know more. So this is definitely one to watch out for in the future, a face-stuffing feast of polyphonic fantasy, post-colonial farce, and riotous, rumbustious imagining.