I hope you’re ready for audience participation, because Follow the Faun is not just a show that only occasionally asks for your interaction, but is an experience that has you dancing, clawing, flying, swimming and sweating the whole way through.

Like a mythical Jane Fonda, Andy Black as The Faun – complete with tribal tattoos, horns and glittering silver hooves – has you moving from the get-go as trance music, colourful lights and projections transform the empty, black room into an impromptu rave space. It’s easy to see how everything could fall apart in these crucial first few moments. Audience participation is a strange beast at the best of times, and a less-than-enthused crowd could make this show an awkward mess at best or a painfully unbearably experience at worst. However, Black’s infectious energy and his admirably ability to control the room as soon as he enters sees the audience swept up in the nonsensical storyline they jump, hump and prance their way through. Black’s bubbly assistant, the effervescent Apollo Garcia, acts as another source of energy and happiness in the room. Occasionally becoming a foil to Black’s authoritative Faun, he definitely helps to keep the element of fun alive while joining the audience, banishing feelings of self-consciousness about dancing in front of others with his own enthusiastic participation.

While Black and Garcia are obviously skilful when it comes to getting a crowd enthused and energised, when it comes down to it, this is a show that will only be as much fun as those in the audience let it be. The storyline is thin when it’s present at all. Sticking to the theme of mythical dealings, you ride unicorns, grow wings and disembowel the helpless Garcia – just before welcoming him into the sea of souls – with little to no explanation. As for the projections and lights, they serve their purpose of changing the space into something a bit more mystical, but are by no means a Brechtian revelation about how technology can be used in theatre. No, the story and the lights are simply there to let the audience have fun if they throw themselves into the experience and allow themselves to just enjoy something a bit strange and off the beaten track.

Follow the Faun is weird, wonderful and most importantly, fun. You’re not going to find many nuanced conversations about today’s society or issues, but you’ll be dancing, jumping and unabashedly enjoying yourself without worrying what you look, sound, or smell like (and everyone leaves smelling of either sweat or incense). It’s definitely an experience that’s only as enjoyable as you let it be, but even if you leave thinking it was more strange than joyful, you’ll have had a great workout in the meantime.

Follow the Faun is playing at the Arts Theatre until 7 May. For more information and tickets, see the Arts Theatre website.