“I could do better if I just took my shoes and socks off,” commented one young woman as she walked out one hour and 20 minutes in to this dance-based show.

An emphasis on pointless activity – like emptying blue liquid into a funnel and stripping down to sad-looking underwear – underpinned the lacklustre drama in this 105-minute-long interval-less piece of nerve-jangling performance from director and choreographer Wim Vandekeybus.

The comedy was as enjoyable as that found at a bus stop outside Tesco in East Croydon, while some feat of direction rendered the crowd scenes less of a visual and dramatic feast than the solos and duets.

The dialogue, meanwhile, was trite and delivered in a posturing mixture of weird accents. The only slightly redeeming moment was a skilled and spooky dance sequence by little boy Luke and his “weird sister” of a mother.

Flanked by rusty-looking panels, the performers writhed at the end of pieces of elastic. “You may think that you’re alive, but you’re dead,” proclaimed nine-year-old Martha to the band of unappealing artistes. Leaving the theatre, it was a relief to breathe in the evening air and rejoice in the realisation that the opposite was, in fact, true.