Lost and Found Orchestra **** TNT

Way back in 1991, Steve McNicholas and Luke Creswell created “Stomp”. From tiny beginnings it’s gone on to play to more than 12 million people across the continents and has just extended its West End run. With just eight performers, that was a small-scale enterprise compared to their current undertaking — a percussive concert of rhythms and riffs played out on instruments you won’t find in any conventional orchestra, and performed with an infectiously joyful energy by a cast of around 40, plus a voluntary choir.

Violin bows create an other-worldly sound as they're drawn across filed down saws, steel catering cauldrons make powerful drums, sections of truck radiator hose rhythmically hit the floor, partly filled water coolers are shaken and waste pipes and traffic cones are puffed and blown.
Aerial artists swing through the air to strike like wayward human pendulums and there’s a touch of humorous clowning (but not too much). Even plastic bags, filing cabinets and a bed have their musical parts to play.
Sometimes eerily beautiful, sometimes wildly exuberant (and already a hit at the Sydney Festival in 2006) this is inspired, inventive fun — the perfect antidote to a seasonal surfeit of Christmas carols and the only place to see a squonkaphone in action.

Royal Festival Hall South Bank Centre, Belvedere Road , SE1 (0871 663 2500) Until 11 January tickets £14-£55