Bonenkai

To the untrained eye, the members of Club Bonenkai look like recently graduated drama students trying to figure out what to do with their lives. As their many pronouncements inform us, however, they're actually a bunch of decadent libertines eschewing everyday convention because they've no choice in the matter. They're intrinsically bohemian and know no other way.

When an outsider steps through a prop door and infiltrates the collective's stage, it transpires that they're also complete dicks. For no sooner have they finished a musical number welcoming us into the fold, do they treat this newcomer with suspicion, hostility and smug amusement. Honestly, the nerve of this 9-5 working stiff for thinking herself compatible with Bonenkai life! Doesn't she know what Bonenkai is?

From what we can gather, the gang defines itself purely through a slavish adherence to Tim Burton-inspired costume design. Their guest is dressed in what appears to be smart-casual work clothing, and is therefore hopelessly out of her depth until she adopts a more confident demeanor. But strip her mentors of their tattered formal attire, white face paint and dark mascara, and you're left with a talented bunch of multi-instrumentalists, performing curiously self-aggrandising songs to a mostly muted late night audience. No-one wants to join their gang because we're not sure what this would entail. Thus, we contentedly play spectator to this solid offering, the concept of which it's hard to envisage going any further.