In Britain, teenagers are spotty, miserable people who wear hoodies and are prone to knifing you. In Belgium teenagers are neon and joyous and riotous and look like an Abercrombie & Fitch advert. I know which I prefer. Once and For All We’re Going to Tell You Who We Are, So Shut Up and Listen is from Belgium. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll paean to the ideal of youth, with the best sound track you’ll hear this side of a Tarantino film. And yes, it really is from Belgium.

The composition of Once and For All is a bit like a Jackson Pollock painting: up close it’s a baffling, chaotic mess; stand back and it develops cohesion and beauty. Unlike Jackson Pollock, Once and For All also has lots of jokes. Performed by 13 teenagers, it’ll probably be unlike anything you’ve ever seen on stage before. It’s crazy and it’s great. As you enter, somewhere backstage there is a wild whooping noise – part Flemish warm up, part Lord of the Flies. As you’re seated and darkened, the thrust space is blank except for 13 mismatched, wooden chairs forming a neat row against the back wall. These chairs are the anchor point for this highly physical piece of work, they mark a line of order which the performers break free from and return to, smash up and replace. This show is so full of life and exuberance that the audience have to be shielded with plastic to protect them from the life and exuberance.

This is not a play with a narrative. The same scene is replayed and re-imagined multiple times - a kaleidoscopic reprise. One time it is playful, one time violent, one time off-stage, one time described, one time an American sitcom, one time a drug-drenched party, etc, etc. And if you’re Anglo Saxon and queasy about teenage sexuality, some of these scenes might be tricky to watch – it’s not Larry Clark’s Kids, but a hint of Lolita may skirt through your mind. The scenes are broken up with alarm sounds (perhaps a school bell? Certainly it’s a noise that temporarily restores a recognisable order). It’s a glorious show, at once disciplined and abandoned. Like the work of the American company The TEAM in the same Traverse space last year, it’s deconstructive and filled with hope. It’s not cynical.

While it’s performed by teenagers and about being a teenager, it’s far from universal in its exploration of what that means – all of these guys are (as the programme notes promise) ‘super cool’. Neither is it free from the aesthetic fascism of fashion mags – this ensemble really do look like an ad campaign: they are uniformly thin, beautiful and well groomed. And their Blondie t-shirts and skinny jeans would make the cast of Fame seem like Dickensian urchins. These teenagers are commodified. They are part of the idea of what it is to be between the ages of 13 and 19. 
But then Once and For All is what it is. It’s a show about being, rather than about reflection. As one girl says, ‘I have no choice, you see: I have to go too far… Everything has been done before, but not by me’. And it is amazing to watch how far they go within the constrained space of a theatre. Once and For All We’re Going To Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen is full of vreugde (that’s Flemish for joie de vivre), and like the best advertising it makes you want to be them and do what they do. It makes you want to cover yourself in paint and flick people with balloons.