GREEK tragedy gets a bad press. So old, so dull, so wordy, so what.

Actors of Dionysus, in their years in York, gave it a sexy makeover. Kneehigh Theatre, the experimental Cornish travelling troupe, go far further. They tear up Euripides's text - not a word survives, says director Emma Rice with punk glee - and then re-write the rule book. Seductive and decadent, anarchic yet ultimately moral too, The Bacchae is funny and bloody and bloody funny, but shattering in its stark finale.

Rice says Kneehigh's absurdist version tells the story of the battle between the wild and the tame, the elation of breaking the rules and the terrible price to pay. "It implicates us all and asks the question: what would you do?" From Animal Farm to The Lord Of The Flies to The Bacchae 2004 Remix, literary history shows human behaviour is destined to repeat itself.

With writers Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy, film-maker Laura Hardman, soundscape composer and musical director Stu Barker, Rice and her international cast of actor-musicians explore the thrill of wickedness on an open-plan Bill Mitchell set that makes wonderful use of height, with ladders and pulleys and airborne tutu dresses that remind you of a Magritte painting.

The Bacchae of the title are a chorus of women, here played by men (as Rice tampers with gender with no less impact than Matthew Bourne's all-male Swan Lake).

Robert Lucskay's transcontinental, transsexual Dionysus, a divinely decadent sight in his pin-striped suit, bask and stilettos, leads them astray from the daily grind on a surfeit of wine, revelry and dance, with tragic consequence.

Their ruler, Pentheus (Giles King), seeks to contain their uncontrollable urges with a peevish regime, but their sensuality has been released, their inhibitions cast off in ecstasy, as they join Pentheus's wild, raging mother (the extraordinary, exotic, fine-boned Eva Magyar, pictured).

From pantomime singalongs, blackboard demonstrations and myriad comic devices from music hall to Brecht, Rice's production suddenly darkens in a brutal, raw conclusion.

Issues of leadership, control, collective and individual responsibility, even a Friday night culture spinning out of control, all come crashing to the floor as the laughter dies.

Box office: 0113 213 7700

Updated: 09:56 Friday, October 08, 2004