Where else but the Battersea Arts Centre could you enjoy chansons with camembert, a 100-year-old organ and the music of a gypsy music icon?

Little Bulb Theatre has been lighting up the stage with popular and immersive shows since forming at the University of Kent in 2008 so I was intrigued by their latest offering which takes audience members on a musical journey to the underworld.

They have interspersed the Greek myth of the lyre player, Orpheus, and his tragic love Eurydice with songs from Edith Piaf and jazz player Django Reinhardt. 

Battersea Arts Centre is excellent at combining trailblazing theatre with a sense of nostalgia and the vaults of the former Victorian town hall were transformed into a 1930s French cabaret-style facade complete with a 19th century organ.

The cast are adept at playing instruments, singing and displaying Bacchanalian excess to a tee.

One of my favourite scenes was a tableau where the cast appear as forest creatures. The actors’ animalistic tendencies resonate throughout the production and made much of the show compelling.

Compere Yvette Pepin (Eugenie Pastor) displays the same tremulous tones as a Piaf-style character and is a spit of the singer with similar avian features.

Meanwhile Dominic Conway portrays with aplomb the gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt who mesmerised audiences in the 1930s despite losing three fingers in a fire.   

Conway sports a pencil-thin moustache and moved almost like a tree frog in a dinner jacket with his agility and languid limbs.

The audience can get a culinary slice of the French bistro with themed food beforehand such as beef bourguignon, and whole baked camembert available in the interval - it is cheaper if you pre-book. (I did feel as though the production would make more sense after a glass of wine.)

I thought the dramatic tension lagged slightly after the interval and it took some time to get back into the swing of things.

Although the music is impressive - apparently many of the cast members learned specifically for this production –the Orpheus narrative seemed stronger and more inventive.

The chorus members were incredible and the solo from Persephone (Tom Penn) - when he attempts to persuade Hades to release Orpheus’ wife from the underworld – is the campest and most haunting piece of theatre I have seen in a long time.

So in summary: a ridiculously bonkers evening radiating joie de vivre from the rafters.

Orpheus is A Little Bulb Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre co-production

Battersea Arts Centre in Lavender Hill, Wandsworth

Performances take place from 16 April to 11 May and tickets cost between £10 and £20

Call 020 7223 2223 or visit bac.org.uk