Phaedra's Love at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

The state of British society is appalling. There are arrogant, ignorant chavs at the bottom and repulsive, depraved aristocrats at the top – and we'll all be better off without them.

This is a problem exposed in Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love, where it is picked at like an angry scab. At the heart is the spoilt brat of a prince, Hippolytus. You may have seen messier living rooms in student houses (I have), but you've probably not met someone quite so unpleasantly repellent as this slob. Yet women – and men – still want him! What is there attractive about him? Sure, he's not physically unattractive, but it's hard to see anything likeable. Rupert Lazarus gives the arrogant sneer and charisma needed for such a wastrel with an assured charm – damn him. His Hippolytus is almost a sympathetic character, and it's that which makes the play hang together.

What of that play? Phaedra's Love is based on a Greek Tragedy which takes Hippolytus as its main character, but in Kane's hands it becomes a brutal attack firstly on medical science and then on religion. The shrinks are as flawed as their patients, incapable of giving any help beyond saying that Hippolytus needs to lose weight. Not helpful in the slightest. And as for religion! Kane's Hippolytus is a violently, self-righteously Atheist in a world that seems utterly devoid of any divinity. The Catholic Church – seen in Jamie Askill's Priest – is yet another institution that lets down those most in need of it. Kane shows both medical science and religion to be a disgrace and a let-down.

Racheal Shaw's giggly Phaedra burns on a pyre along with any shred of decency in the world, and the firestorm caused is only the beginning of the end. While Edmund Jones' Theseus tears himself apart in grief, the world goes to Hell and will never come back.

But that gang of chavs at the doors when the audience enters prove that the world is already in a dire state. These floatsam place themselves inside the audience before they pour their filthy presences onto the stage and form the mob at the climax. Their rage at so public a criminal is palpable and has been in some form for much of the play. While the mob is undeniably necessary, it might not need to be chavs – nor do they need to come amongst the audience. They personify the play's rage with unnerving power in the final moments, so much so that I was willing them to their unspeakable acts of violence. So well done to them, the horrible little scumbags.

Doesn't it just make you mad?