Hotel Medea, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, review There's a risky idea behind this theatre "experience" currently running as part of the Southbank Centre's festival of the world - to keep audiences awake from midnight until six the next morning for a retelling of the Greek story of Jason (of the Argonauts) and his sorceress wife Medea. The show's creators, Persis-Jade Maravala from the UK and Brazilian Jorge Lopes Ramos, initially found it hard to sell the idea to theatres. It's easy to understand why: it takes a strong mind to set off in darkness to the beginning of one's night, as most people are making their way home to bed. Surprisingly, however, Hotel Medea has not lacked willing audiences since Maravala and Lopes Ramos began developing the show in 2009. The first of three two-hour sections (which can also be seen as stand-alone pieces, without having to stay the whole night) is particularly good. In a colourful, brilliantly disorientating marketplace, members of the audience barter with traders trying to sell illicit wares. Then a wedding takes place where the audience is goaded into dancing, shouting and performing in the celebration rituals accompanied by booming, rhythmical music played live by a DJ. Despite being on your feet the entire time, these initial hours fly by. A bedtime story and welcome rest come at about three in the morning. The audience is split into groups and each one experiences the same story elements at different times, so you comfortably doze off without missing any narrative thread. It is well thought through and the feeling of being tired is intrinsic to the action - the audience become the doomed children of Jason and Medea, who are in bed, falling in and out of sleepy awareness as they hear their parents argue in a room nearby. The show explores the figure of Medea as an outsider and immigrant brought to live in Jason's country. But how and why Medea is driven to commit filicide in order to punish her wayward husband is not given the full focus it should. We're left wanting more of the intentions behind Maravala's mad, sad Medea and less of James Turpin's macho, chisel-chinned Jason. Nevertheless, the themes and ideas from the original stories are vibrantly explored and, although it will leave you utterly exhausted, this anarchic theatrical explosion will keep you thinking well past the dawn. Until August 11.