You Me Bum Bum Train, secret location review - a joyful multiverse of anarchic creativity

This feels like the theatrical equivalent of being in a centrifuge – a wild, spinning ride through different forms of reality that deftly separates out the different layers of who you think you are. It’s a multiverse that’s like a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Everything Everywhere All At Once – both liberating and challenging as you hurtle from one situation to another.

For the critic, a further challenge is presented once you emerge into the so-called real world again, since you have signed a terrifying form that promises you will sacrifice your household pets – or something similar – if you dare to divulge any detail of what happens. Maybe I just imagined that, but still, surprise is the beating heart of this exhilarating invention, and the way you react to that surprise is intrinsic to its chemistry.

Most people are familiar with the story of how co-creators Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd (pictured right) met at Brighton University while studying illustration. Bond had first had the idea for the show in 2004 while she was downing White Russians in a tiny house in Oaxaca – spoiler, this is NOT one of the situations in which you will find yourself. When she returned to Brighton, she showed Lloyd the drawing she had done of a train taking passengers to different worlds. Their first realisation of her White Russian hallucination involved transporting passengers in a wheelchair through environments concocted from an assortment of recycled materials.

Twenty years later, this logistically fiendish, breathtakingly original experience boasts a history that includes winning the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Prize and A-list fans such as Madonna, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. It says a lot for how inspirational people find it that the wonderful individuals who help create the different worlds in each room you enter are all volunteers – if they were not the cost of tickets would soar from £100 to several thousand pounds.

Since I was starting a family last time You Me Bum Bum Train was the hottest ticket in town (you’re advised not to attend if you’re pregnant) I missed out on what people were whispering was the most heady, life-affirming show they’d experienced. I had watched the rise of site-specific companies like Punchdrunk and Dreamthinkspeak and was inevitably curious when people said that You Me Bum Bum Train took things a step further.

This latest incarnation – which has arrived back in London after an eight-year hiatus – is, according to those who’ve experienced earlier shows, even more elaborate and better developed than what came before. Certainly the Heath Robinson complexity of the design, the loving attention to detail with which each scene is realised and the giddy ingenuity of the transitions is a testament to the wildfire creativity that drove Morgan and Lloyd to come up with the idea in the first place.

Yet in an age where everything from Instagram culture to the billion-pound self-improvement industry emphasises the primacy of the individual, there’s little doubt that testing yourself as a person is key to the appeal of this show. As I’ve said, I can reveal no details, but as one of the main protagonists in every scene you enter you certainly get to test your capacity for empathy, morality, playfulness and the ability to assert yourself in a fractured, frantic world.

There are physical challenges too, but these feel more akin to suddenly being in a large playground than anything you’d encounter in a marine survival course. Part of the high-octane fun is that while this aspect of the show puts you firmly in touch with your inner child, being able to negotiate each situation involves drawing on the stockpile of wisdom you’ve attempted to accrue as an adult.

There are times when you feel you’ve risen to the occasion, and others when you feel you want to go back and try the damn whole thing again. A bit like life then, but life as a crazy, anarchic game that whirls you around before sending you out into the street again with a spring in your step and a billion-dollar smile on your face.

• You Me Bum Bum Train is sold out for its entire run but you can still get involved as a volunteer
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk