Written in the fourth century BC by Euripides, this is the tragedy of the royal house of Cadmus in ancient Thebes. Like all Greek tragedy it deals with enormous issues and emotions and requires extraordinary bravura acting. It gets that in spades in this all male version from the talented CalArts group.Dionysus (Doug Spearman) is a young god, angry that his mortal family has denied him a place of honor as a deity. Well, youd be pissed off if your mum was a mistress of Zeus and while pregnant was killed because she looked upon him in his divine form, and then your dad had imbedded your embryo in his thigh and then given birth to you and nobody believed you! So far, so EastEnders.The play goes on to show how Dionysus extracts a terrible revenge on his family. This productions twist is to turn all of the characters into men. We first encounter his followers, The Bacchae of the title, about to conjure him up. In the original his followers were female, here they are very fit and sexy young men, who writhe and squirm through the first scene lighting themselves and each other with torches. When their master arrives its a real coup de theatre as a huge black sheet they have been billowing becomes his amazing costume and he appears as if my magic, a hench, black, giant a divine drag queen. After the sheer power and sexual potency of that entrance he utters, in camp tone, 'Hi, my names Dionysus, whats yours?' Very funny.But here lies the one slight weakness of the piece; the tones uncertain. The actors are universally terrific, and theres particularly moving work from Mike Tauzin as Doulos, the slave, in the plays bloody and climactic scenes. But theres also a slightly 'sent-up' tone about some of it, including a gay disco scene and an exchange of rings involving rings not intended to be placed on the finger!These are minor criticisms. Director Michael Matthews and choreographer Marvin Tunney have done incredible work and the adaptation by Allain Rochel is very clever. Its really worth venturing out to the wasteland behind the station to this independent venue. Dionysus was the god of wine, wine cups, theatre, wineskin, grapes, fertility, carnival, sexual experimentation and debauchery. He is alive and well and living in Edinburgh every August.