This National Theatre Wales production in partnership with Frantic Assembly allowed its audience to take part in a Swansea Saturday night without having to brave the crowds of Wind Street.
It being a promenade production we could be shouted at, shifted around, divided up, jostled and even moved along by the police. It all happened inside the dimmed interior of the Patti Pavilion where individual stages were moved or lit into focus, allowing us to see the tribal rituals of the night.
Most productions save their surprises for later but this sprang one as soon as you moved in front of a grey/brown front room with a wan looking young man in it. Could the tall female figure standing over him, covered in a grey, corpse-like colouring, really be Siān Phillips? Well yes it could and it was the start of an electrifying performance where she showed just how stillness, silence and sheer presence can add up to acting you can't tear your eyes from.
Mostly though this was about groups of young people and it did take a little time to catch fire. The movements of a hoodies' dance when the evening proper started were superbly executed but the scene went on too long for an audience still uncertain about their own role in events.
Past that we got the first of a series of rules of behaviour, this one from the boys on how to pull the girls. The matching one from the girls on how best the boys can avoid seeming like total twats was where the evening started to catch fire.
Full incendiary status arrived with the lavatory doors. Every aspect of public loo behaviour occurred in very funny and sublimely choreographed vignettes. This included the first of a series of breathtakingly effective collapses by seemingly boneless actors.
The scenes gradually built up a picture of awkward youth groping towards relationships, an elegiac beach sequence or the awkwardness of reaching for actual words to try to express feelings via a mountain of love letters.
The best of the lists was that spoken by the young loser, a list of all those things that will go wrong for the perpetually put upons of society.
As the performance drew to a close we again met the sombreness of addict hoodies but this time without the energy. And then the evening's big surprise. There once more was Siān Phillips, this time high up at an unexpected window. Now she was flooded with light and draped with gossamer fabric that enveloped the audience and the actors.
She recited words of glory and welcome, I assume Dylan Thomas' from the story that inspired the piece. It was an ecstatic end to an always fascinating, if sometimes unfocused, evening of promenade theatre.
Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett's joint direction was firm and clear, the movement work was excellent and, equally important, the impressive and fully committed cast of nine coped superbly with managing and manoeuvring the promenading audience.
I resisted going for the possible act 2, the noisy reality of Wind Street, but I did pass a group of lads who were barking like dogs now there's irony.
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