All manner of politics and ideologies have been percolating through this Arches Behaviour programme, with issues of gender and racism well-served and intelligently probed by Nic Green and Ann Liv Young especially. This final production, by German andcompany&Co, muses on communism past, present and future. Nicola Nord and her associates are curious about the fabric – real or imagined -of Utopian states and the aftermath of radical political change, and keen to explore how one nation’s vision of an ideally functioning society is seen as a destabilising threat by another. The McCarthy era sequence in which Walt Disney is grilled about the presence, and influence, of communists in Hollywood borders on farce – except the sheer blinkered banality of the questions is chilling, the "yes" or "no" inflexibility of the answers ensuring the hearing’s foregone conclusion that communism is the Enemy of the United States.

Elsewhere, this docu-fable plays a clever cat-and-mouse game with time shifts and historical perspectives, allowing a space-helmeted Little Red to travel back from a distant future to kickstart activist debates which swiftly
descend into youthful wrangles about personal heroes (John Lennon looms large) and conflicting beliefs. The mix of music, text – some in German – and an alphabet set that deconstructs into monolothic words that then "spread communism" across the stage (before shrinking back) works well, if selectively, to corral the tectonic plates of twentieth-century political history into 75 minutes. There’s one very desirable utopia that Little Red really brings centre-stage, and which has been at the heart of Behaviour: theatremaking that prefers risk-taking over complacency.

 (Star rating: ***)