You work hard. You go to every last show they can possibly send you to. You diligently read all the programme notes. You spend time, lots of time – hours, in fact – working on your blog posts. And in between, you even harass your agent to line up more auditions. So yeah, you work hard. In fact, you know you work hard.

Or that’s what you think you know.

And then a damned wunderkind like Tom Creed crosses your path. And despite having a bazillion shows to direct, rehearsals to lead, and meetings to attend, he’s here for the show. That’s right. And not only that, but he’s sociable and approachable too. Goddamn it. I should just quit now. Maybe hang with Dante and Randal.

But I hang on. And I learn that, even for a slacker, persistence brings its own rewards.

Because in Basso Ostinato Italian choreographer Caterina Sagna has delivered an audacious, gratifying and incisive work, one unafraid to grub around in the grimy settlings of human existence.

Its title is a musical term, ostinato being a succession of equal sounds; the basso ostinato, a bassline repeated over and over again, while other parts proceed with variation. And the form and progression of the piece certainly makes this an accurate descriptor.

Two men sit at a table. Behind them, on a television set, a ballet plays. The meal is over; and what remains of the evening is fated to a long unwinding in booze, cigarettes and reminiscences. The half-remembered quotes and anecdotes that score an unraveling life will be punctuated by the accidental mishaps of inebriation, both physical and verbal. A dropped cigarette. An unwise confession.

With a bassline established – repeat, with variation. The television set is wheeled off, its place taken by a third man and movement displaces – yet never fully replaces – the spoken word. Instead, sentences are whittled away by gesture, words dropped with each fall, and the essential basso continuo that physicality imparts to all communication becomes increasingly audible. In their interactions, they compete, compel and reject; enforce and exclude; dominate and fall victim. Scripted responses become vague and confused; bodies lose balance, become frantically avaricious, or are struck with sudden mortality; bone dissolves, flesh crawls itself towards a sea of oblivion and man is reduced to worm or worm-food. And over and over, again and again, all return – or fight to return – to a bottle-laden table, where one might have a sip or a drag of something…anything, even the blackest most noxious of things, just to find distraction. Life seems a sinking into a morass, a mire, a terrible solvent. And each starting over, however forceful, is only ever the continuation of a lingering – sometimes explosive – process of decay. This is one damned existence.

And the title also plays with the ambiguities of language (depending on context basso can mean low, shallow, short, inferior, base and mean, and ostinato, persistent, determined and stubborn) as this is precisely what it all descends to: a stubbornly noisome interest in coarse drunkenness, in scatological humour, in the abasing of beauty and the mockery of meaning…until death – that basso ostinato of bodily life – is finally succumbed to.

It all sounds very grim and grimy. And it is. But don’t let this put you off for a second. This is work that leaves you feeling exhilarated. The three dancers are superb and their talents are deftly taken advantage of by Sagna to ensure her vision is as hilarious as it is harrowing.

So go – get your ticket now. Get it here.