The latest offering from two-handed RashDash – theatre’s answer to Robots in Disguise – is a re-working of Cinderella from the ugly sisters’ perspective: an exploration of the struggle for beauty in modern life. What I’m watching is panto meets German Expressionism. The two actresses enter convulsing as if they’d just got out of A&E. Incomprehensible screaming is followed by unfortunate audience members systematically being asked: “Are we bitches?”

Half an hour in – somewhere between the liposuction-themed dance and motherhood song delivered by a bearded musician – I’m grinning ruthlessly. There aren’t superlatives to outline these depths of oddness. We’ve been warned: audience members may be singled out for “self-scrutiny.” We’ve been spanked and I think we like it.

It’s a worthy cause, but somewhere the twosome get side-tracked. Halfway through the piece and the anger is palpable – I’d feel safer in a riot. The guitarist is going through an awkward foreplay ritual stage left. One ugly sister is running around with a large drum, while the other is rocking to the beat with a Jungle Book wiggle. They seem a couple of overgrown groupies getting in the way of the band but they’re more committed than anyone I’ve seen do anything. They’ve been method-matting their hair for months. I look around and all I see are teenage girls who seem to understand what’s going on.

Suddenly, one of the sisters is trying on beautiful clothes. The bawling of pre-pubescence is over, but the antidote is sexualisation. Next, I see the audience blindly clapping to a song about the instant stardom of the X Factor and Page 3. Now I see which side of the fence I’d rather be on. I am entirely won over until a Barbie doll is beaten with a drum stick.

Their one-liners sink in succession but the sustained clowning stops the entire craft from going under. The story-tellingis done well though at times it tends towards being patronising. It’s like being back at school, only with obscene teachers. The short bursts of contemporary dance are incredible, although obscured in the general nonsense. The meta-theatre grows annoying, and the repeated motif of performance anxiety becomes one uneasiness-inducer too far.

To compare the mood of the evening to something from Plath’s ‘Ariel’ wouldn’t be a tall order. The piece grew in intensity, by the end having won me over too late. The ugly sisters turned from yelping monsters to Beatrice and Eugenie on wedding day. They became victims of expectation. They were taken off to hospital. The smile was wiped from my face.