House Party is way cool. It’s way cooler than me, in fact. You want proof? Check out the Facebook page, it has more friends than I do. And I basically operate on a come-one-come-all policy. No, no, it’s well out of my league. Want to know something else? House Party is not even a party, it’s a play.

Or is it?

Well, tricky one, actually. You see, House Party is what people who smoke those brown, licorice cigarettes and watch The Culture Show (ironically) might call ‘site-specific theatre’. It’s all perilously complicated but, roughly, this is when a play is staged where it is set. The thing is, site-specific theatre is so bloody hot at the minute that you turn on BBC 4 any hour of the day or night and you’re never more than six feet away from one. They’re a menace.

So, House Party: well, first everyone meets at the ADC and is whisked away to a secret location (told you it was cool). Once everyone’s arrived, we’re shouted at by a bouncer and told to line up like we’re off to Dachau. Then we’re split into two groups, the invited and the not-invited, and the ‘play’ starts.

I can’t really go into too much detail, because that would butcher the experience a little. Essentially, however:

You turn up and start traipsing through the party – a party that seems to be populated by girls that look like Russell Brand, and boys that either look like Heath Ledger’s Joker or Rufio from Hook. After a bit of an introduction, everyone’s given a glass of potent home brew. DO NOT DRINK IT - it's fucking horrible. No, wait: taste it, but be prepared for the experience of urine blended with cold tea. Right, then you’re shown snippets of a sort of love-triangle thing between Lucy (Mel Heslop), Seb (Josef Pitt-Rashid) and Jack (Ned Stuart-Smith). As the play goes on, bits of this storyline are interspersed with musical interludes, monologues from other characters, heavily accentuated conversations, and weird dance routines. Stuff that you might find at a party. Well, a party on Skins, anyway.

Now, there’s a fair bit wrong with this production: firstly, the nicely established narrative sort of fizzles out as we get lost in the episodic workings of the party. Secondly, the script is a bit uneven, oscillating uncomfortably from stern, studenty theatrics to warm humorous anecdotes. Thirdly, some of the choreographed sequences sail rather too closely to knee-biting embarrassment for my liking. And I’ve seen Stomp.

However – and by crikey, is there a ‘however’– when House Party hits the right notes, it is absolutely spectacular. Orchestrated perfectly, when inside, coloured lights stream in to cast unnerving and unnatural patterns on the walls. When outside, lit rooms provide colorful windows into muted and private scenes. The music, whether it was played by the cast or by the resident DJ, is perfectly pitched so as to vary between background hubbub, rousing drunken sing-a-longs and surreally transportive codas. What’s more, at times, the charged performances, played out centimeters from your face, are compelling and utterly disarming.

It’s a weird piece, and a controversial one too, no doubt. But it is fresh and audacious, and when it captured that precise cocktail of drama and voyeurism, it was simply electrifying.