Let’s get one thing clear – this is not a straight-up stage adaptation of the sci-fi classic, H.G. Wells’ quaintly localised novel that saw Martians ransacking Woking and Leatherhead. Nor is there much trace of the Spielberg film version; no sign of Dakota Fanning, Tom Cruise, blood-red creepers or many-legged leviathans. This is a different beast entirely, one in which the only tripods seen are those used to hold up old-timey radio mikes.

The audience is greeted by the four cast members, all simultaneously playing the pipe-wielding Orson Welles, and reflecting on the wonder of the wireless, the inauspicious wooden box that could bring Roosevelt, Hitler or Chamberlain to life in your front room. Welles celebrates how he harnessed this extraordinary power in 1938, transplanting The War of the Worlds from Surrey to New Jersey and performing the piece as a radio programme. So effective was the execution, and so beguiling the broadcast’s layers of disguise, that some listeners believed that an invasion really was afoot. Welles’ piece of audio trickery had whipped up the Eastern seaboard into widespread hysteria.

We see the broadcast cleverly re-enacted onstage here. Announcers interrupt a live concert from a local ballroom to inform listeners of curious explosions detected on the planet Mars. Bulletins become increasingly tense, and intrepid reporter Carl Phillips goes to investigate the mysterious cylinders that have landed in the New Jersey countryside. Crucially, everything is heard and not seen, as Carl approaches a green glow coming from offstage. It is his reaction, and the reactions of curious onlookers, that convey the true horror of the discovery.

A sudden structural sucker-punch follows, as the play veers away from re-enactment and introduces a 21^st-century strand to the story. We meet Mina, a young producer, who is desperate to make her own podcast but struggles for content. In a stroke of good fortune, she comes across a family for whom Welles’ Halloween hoax had profound and lasting implications. We learn that something happened on that panic-stricken night that tore the family apart. Mina’s boss smells blood and implores her, rather ominously, to “go for the jugular”, to bring him back “something with legs”, and Mina duly heads to Grover’s Mill, the site of the ‘landing’, to investigate further.

From this point onwards, the cast flit between the play’s different layers. Welles returns, musing on the impact of his broadcast, at once apologising for misleading the public and crowing about the efficacy of the ruse. The actors perform vignettes of terrified listeners running for trains and rednecks readying themselves for the coming war. In the modern storyline, Mina visits a UFO-themed diner and an alien-looking water tower, but also uncovers something more sinister beneath the small-town charm of a local family. While Dad watches the news and Mom flicks away on Candy Crush, their son, a reclusive media dropout, works away on the Internet. His secret is a dark and dangerous one, especially given that the setting is the lead-up to the 2016 Trump v Clinton presidential election. There are whispered snippets about lizard people and paedophiles, the Chinese and the Mexicans. The conspiracy theories are not limited to the US, either: one character ponders what really happened in that Parisian tunnel.

It all takes place on a stage designed to look like a radio booth, and in a clever touch, the show’s sound technician looks on from behind a Perspex screen as if part of the studio. Costumes are minimalist, allowing each actor to play a host of minor characters. While the cast make the most of the stage-space, bowling over pedestrians in a crowded street, or wrestling through a throng of terrified bystanders, this is a play about voices. The versatility of the cast in this sense is simply staggering: each member can switch with ease from Welles and his plummy radio announcers to a waiter’s drawl or a redneck’s southern twang. Rarely, if ever, do the accents slip.

As the play hurtles towards its jaw-dropping finale it metamorphoses again in terrifying fashion. Here, and throughout, it’s knotty narrative, one that demands rapt attention from the viewer. It asks a barrage of questions too, using Welles’ deception as a device to examine modern-day misinformation. Radio may have given way to TV and Twitter, to zeitgeists and viral news, but the same issues of veracity and authorial intent remain as problematic as ever, and the play’s ending highlights this indiscomfiting fashion. This War of the Worlds adaptation by Rhum + Clay is a haunting work of post-Covid theatre, a slippery, multi-layered piece that warns us not to swallow everything that comes from the tap. “Have you not learnt your lesson?” Orson Welles asks us, jabbing at us with his pipe. Worryingly, I don’t think we have. Not yet.

Rhum & Clay's production The War of the Worlds, based on the furore around Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio production, began rather more immersively than even the cast and creative team anticipated. An unfortunate technical issue with the sound system delayed the start of the play and required a clearing of the auditorium, leaving the audience to hover bewildered in the lobby and wonder what was going on.

With these problems sorted, the play began, and it was worth the wait. The four-member cast swaggered onto the stripped-down, almost empty stage, standing before a radio mic as they collectively played the role of Orson Welles. They introduced the broadcast, and the themes of the play itself, with the famous 'No-one would have believed...' speech, a knowing nod to the power of media and rumour to treat fiction like truth. Welles' The War of the Worlds was arguably the first example of reportage-based fiction, an ancestor to popular podcasts like Limetown or The Black Tapes, and this lineage is nodded to with the introduction of present-day character Meena. Meena is putting together her own podcast about the people of Grovers Mill, the location chosen by Welles for his 'alien invasion', and as she lies and tricks her way into the heart of the town, the questions raised about truth in media become ever more uncomfortable.

Rhum & Clay (run by half of the cast, Julian Spooner and Matthew Wells) take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the serious issues of truth, lies and propaganda. They look at everything from the 1938 panic to the Trump election, but keep the tone light, often sidebarring into absurdity (the 'Happy birthday' scene in the diner got a huge laugh from the audience) or meta-narrative (after a particularly startling moment, actor and co-creator Julian Spooner strolls onto the stage as Welles and announces 'Long pause. Nervous chuckling in the audience.') The play even nods to the fact that it is itself based on a legend - the panic surrounding Welles' broadcast was not sparked by a fear of an alien invasion, but the assumption that the Nazis were attacking, an entirely reasonable fear for 1938.

The cast of four made up for their small number with a fantastic amount of energy, switching roles so quickly that the audience barely had time to catch their breath. Mona Goodwin was very believable as 'Youtuber, blogger and influencer' Meena, while Spooner, Wells and Amalia Vitale shared a wide range of varied and vivid roles, all of them played with excellent comic timing. The play itself, written by Isley Lynn and directed by Spooner and Wells, was at times a little too slick, a little too knowing, but the audience loved it, staying engaged and responsive throughout.

Taking its shaky start on the chin, The War of the Worlds carried off a complex narrative with good humour and high spirits. Orson Welles' declaration that 'I have always been more interested in experiment than accomplishment' fits well with Rhum & Clay's production, as they manage to pull off both.