First things first– there isn’t actually a red demon to be seen in this entire production, despite its very promising name, but there’s a load of other stuff going on at the Lateshow this week. Hideki Noda’s play tells the story of an outsider, perceived as a monster, who arrives on an island. He/she/it is feared, ridiculed and eventually eaten by islanders, who live in a society governed by the ‘village elders,’ and where clearly being a bit different means you definitely won’t get statutory rights, or friends, or laid.

Noda has taken a story that has been told before (I kept thinking of the penguins in Happy Feet) and turned it into something different (do you see the important moral messages beginning to LEAP out at you?). Hats off to this cast for not going all arty and pretentious on us with this play– it must have been tempting.

Katie Alcock really holds it all together, albeit with a lot of angst and sharp, emphatic hand gestures. Mind you, I’d probably be the same if I was referred to constantly as ‘That Woman’, and eventually fed bits of a person whom I’d tried to save. I debated over Peter Skidmore’s Tombi: on the one hand, his constant jiggling did make me want to yell out that maybe he should just bloody well go to the loo, but his wide-eyed, ‘rabbit in the headlights’ narration is very effective.

The ensemble is a bit like Marmite, or Take That: you either love them or hate them. They screech and wail their way from crude hags to upper class elders and back to menacing local villagers without much distinction. Apart from when they crack out the standard ‘posh person’s voice,’ it is hard to tell who is who. If you get over that, however, the ensemble’s energy is contagious, and they keep the action moving brilliantly.

So, what of the elusive Red Demon? Vaish Girish has mesmerising moments, as she scampers around speaking in conversational Tamil, providing a beautiful and effective contrast to the ensemble’s shrieking. The danger with this play is of over-complicating it; the set is unnecessarily busy, as the cast only really uses a table that moonlights as a boat, and a few broken table legs. Also, there are enough naturally comic moments to cancel out the need for self-conscious pantomime: at one point somebody does actually say "it’s behiiiiind youuu!" We get it.

The play itself is about as mixed as a mixed bag can be, and despite a couple of irritations I have to hand it to the cast for keeping its grip on a script that is so full of messages (even Martin Luther King makes an appearance) that you’re not quite sure whether you’re being told to avoid strange islands, be nice to foreigners, or remember your packed lunch so that you don’t end up having to eat said foreigner. Think you know the answer? Don’t be too sure.