SINGAPORE, Nov 6 — For those who have read the 1962 dystopian classic by Anthony Burgess and seen the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect stage version of A Clockwork Orange.

Riveting, intense and unsettling in the best possible way, British theatre company Action To The Word’s staging of the play sits sweetly in just the right spot, adding dimensions to an already layered text firmly established in literary and popular culture.

The all-male cast from the United Kingdom, directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones, enters from amid the audience and marches onto the stage at the Esplanade Theatre to play to a local audience, some of whom may have wondered why it has taken 30 years for the Singapore ban to be lifted.

Still, the story of Alex, a teenage psychopath obsessed with Beethoven and violence whom the authorities attempt to reform through experimental brainwashing techniques, presents ubiquitously relevant themes: The value of free will; the pursuit of ideals at the expense of individuality; and whether, when it comes to state control and personal liberty, the ends justify the means.

A stark and static backdrop makes this production all about the actors’ physicality. In wife-beaters and suspenders, they use their bodies well, prowling the stage like tightly-coiled springs.

As you would expect from a work powered by machismo, there is salivation, perspiration and expectoration.

Scenes of horrific violence are played out in the form of highly stylised dance sequences set to a hair-raising soundtrack, making it clear that Alex’s primal impulse for beauty and art are one and the same as his impulse for brutality.

There are also farcical, laugh-out-loud moments that temper the intensity of the material while simultaneously serving to up the play’s grotesque factor.

As the lead, 23-year-old Jonno Davies (who was also seen on screen in Kingsman: The Secret Service) is impossible to take your eyes off.

Simultaneously charming and repellent, he succeeds in getting the audience to sympathise with a character whose deeds are unapologetically monstrous — never mind that Davies’ shirtless, sinewy presence may give rise to distracting thoughts such as “How many protein shakes does he drink a day?” or “Is he not going to be allowed to eat chicken rice while he’s here in Singapore?”

The uninitiated might at first find it difficult to follow the Nadsat slang that the teenage hoodlums use, but alienation soon turns to recognition on the tide of the relentless incision through the heart of human darkness.

And in the closing scene, Alex turns and speaks directly to the audience, reminding us that we are all complicit in the “horrorshow”.

As our antihero would put it: Call all your droogs, buy them a round of the old moloko and then wind yourselves up to viddy this quality piece of theatre. — TODAY

A Clockwork Orange runs until Nov 8 at the Esplanade Theatre. Tickets from S$68 to S$128 (RM207 to RM391) from SISTIC. — TODAY