Sometimes, it’s nice to be completely wrong. There I was, loudly proclaiming that the ADC was being too conservative in its choice of plays, yearning after disciplined physical theatre and dark fantasy and ambitious new writing, when a lateshow comes along to blow away my arrogant assumptions with a simple wave of a tattered black top hat.

Nikki Moss’s Dandelion Heart is really something worth celebrating: a piece of student writing that is genuinely hilarious, finely crafted and feels like it might actually be about something important. Quite what, I’m not sure, but it is the triumph of the show that it is obscure and strange without ever giving the impression that the playwright is, for want of a better word, bullshitting. 

The play is apparently set in a decaying circus, though it may well also be a shared fantasy-space of its four characters. The new girl, Stephanie (Stephanie Aspin), finds it impossible to leave, though she isn’t sure quite why, while the Boy (Michael Cotton) yearns for the day when he will take the place of the terrifyingly ebullient emcee Benjamin-Benjamin (Tom England), who along with technician August (Immy Gardam) is fixated on getting the lighting working again. 

This absurd landscape would be bleak and bitter were it not for the brilliantly written and delivered dialogue, as well as stunningly well-timed slices of physical comedy and physical theatre sequences which consistently show a cast utterly at ease with one another and utterly polished.

I hesitate to use the phrase “pure theatricality” since it sounds like it doesn’t mean anything, but I think it is appropriate here. It is a play about people who have nothing left but to perform, and they do so with all the skill of silent movie stars – hurling each other across the stage, going through mechanical dance-like routines that brought to mind the work of Frantic Assembly and generally providing such fire, energy and sheer talent that any questions as to why they were doing any of it were suspended indefinitely. 

Every detail of set and costume was perfect, right down to the mismatched shoes, steampunk goggles and half-obscured sign we assume tells us not to feed the lions. The lighting design too, by Nick Gebbett and Joe Hobbs, deserves mention for its very unsettling use of strobe effects. 

Special mention to any of the cast would seem churlish, so I’ll give the reviewer’s nod to one who wasn’t officially part of it – the enigmatic James Bloor, about whom I think I can only say that Charlie Chaplin himself would have been fairly impressed with the laughs he could get from a battered old hat.

As for what the play was ultimately about - I don’t know, but I didn’t feel irritated by that. Extraordinarily for a student-written piece, I genuinely felt like I could get a better understanding the second time around. While the runtime was perhaps a little long for a lateshow (Moss might benefit from a friendly but brutal editor), this piece really astounded me and the rest of the audience. The play features a rather sad billboard heaped at the back of the set claiming brightly: “it’s something really special!!!” And indeed it is.