The Caucasian Chalk Circle, National Theatre Cottesloe, London

A quotation in the programme from the man himself reminds us that, for all the heavy-going productions his plays have suffered over the years, Bertolt Brecht believed fundamentally in the playfulness of plays. This new production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle - a successful collaboration between the National and the experimental theatre collective Filter - certainly makes for a joyful theatrical experience that stays in the mind long after leaving the stalls.

The horrific stench of war hangs heavily over Sean Holmes's production of the 1944 play but, with its video art, innovative sound effects and a singer-narrator who appears to have wandered off the set of a Franz Ferdinand video, the cumulative sensory assault often feels more like being at a rock concert than at the theatre. Which is not to say that the acting comes a poor second to technical invention. Frank McGuinness's script, first written for a Complicité production at the National in 1997, has been revived and its lilting lines are beautifully spoken and made to dance by a uniformly excellent cast.

While the ensemble is crucial to this show's success, Brecht also wrote two star parts - Grusha, his heroine, a hard-working serving wench who rescues the infant son of the deposed governor and takes him to the mountains for safety when he is left behind by his uncaring mother in the chaos of civil war, and Azdak, the chancer judge who is called upon to decide who should be granted custody of the child.

As Grusha, Cath Whitefield has a ballsy, ruddy-faced charm as she stands, constantly poised for a fight, on the balls of her bare feet, spitting out her words in a flat East End accent. Nicolas Tennant as Azdak, a dishevelled, "permanently pissed" Rab C Nesbitt-like figure in his undone trousers and grubby vest, makes Brecht's hero the right mix of seedy unscrupulousness and good-hearted common sense. In these two characters, Brecht's moral indignation - targeting bourgeois greed and legal corruption - burns bright and it is given space to breathe in the final courtroom scene, which is played straight.

But Holmes's production never lets us forget the ludic aspect of Brecht. Each member of the cast taps the comic potential of their role and inhabits it physically, from a Pythonesque silly walk for the Corporal (John Lloyd Fillingham) to Thusitha Jayasundera who, in multiple roles, reveals a talent for accents and clowning. This reaches its comic apex in the scene where, as the Grand Duke in disguise, she sprays the disgusted Azdak with mouthfuls of cheese with every word she utters.

The storytelling is consistently lively, with Azdak's introduction as "the people's judge" transformed into a reggae rap complete with human beatbox and "booyakasha" chorus. Indeed, the sound is outstanding throughout, thanks to Filter and the ever-innovative Chris Branch, who recently soundtracked an entire cityscape in The Receipt with the help of a filing cabinet and a Moog synthesiser.

Brecht's famous alienation effect is put into practice as the cast are called upon to provide sound effects from the sides of the performance space, producing everything from the infant's mewling cries to birdsong and a babbling stream with the help of microphones and a few unlikely props.

As the singer Arkady, who holds the often chaotic proceedings together, Leo Chadburn - a composer and electronic musician who has worked with Patrick Wolf, Franz Ferdinand and Saint Etienne - cuts a lanky and awkwardly compelling figure, in tight jeans, jackboots, stripy shirt and skinny red tie. His booming, solemn vocals, intoned over a heavy percussive beat against a backdrop of grainy black-and-white images of war, bring both terror and humour to Brecht's narrative voice. Rarely has an old classic felt fresher.

To 14 April (020-7452 3000)