LIVE Theatre director Max Roberts has teamed up with Steve Marmion from London’s Soho Theatre to produce something that’s certainly very different.

Written by a range of established and emerging playwrights, as well as comedians and incorporating a range of theatrical styles, this new writing project’s aim is to search through the blueprints of life in an attempt to decide on the ultimate vision of paradise.

Six actors become a cast of fools on Lucy Osborne’s fabulous set that seems to have taken its inspiration from the film Island by Aldous Huxley with the most amazing lighting and sound by Richard Howell and Tom Gibbons.

The actors, all in white, mostly dressed in underwear, except for comedian Rufus Hound’s stalin-red shoes and underpants, have the faded clown make-up of yesterday’s laughter.

Outstanding writing abounds in the anarchy and chaos of more than eight individual short stories.

Sunnyglade, by Michael Chaplin, tells of a blind, retired MP who sits in a rest home secretly swigging gin contemplating her failed political career. Pamela Miles excels, but it is Sunderland lass Laura Elphinstone who steals the limelight as her young care nurse.

Propaganda, by Alistair McDowall, is performed by David Whitaker, who tells his chained prisoner, Sophia Myles, of how he indoctrinates young boys to change them into child soldiers. But when his Facebook popularity takes a beating, the dictator has a radical change of heart.

A Nation Free, by Janice Okoh, seems to sum up the evening of existentialist fluff and flummery. Okoh writes of a place where everything is perfect and, if the production had been half an hour shorter, I would have agreed, wholeheartedly.

• Until June 16. Box office 0191- 232-1232 and online live.org.uk