EVIL and innocence follow an identical course, parallel universes in a world of cruelty and oppression.

Meanwhile, the mass denial and willing collusion of the populace provide the oxygen which sustains and gives succour to the perpetrators.

John Boyne’s haunting fable of two little boys whom fate has decreed must exist on opposite sides of a concentration camp’s barbed wire fence is endowed with fresh vigour in this moving and at times disturbing adaptation by Angus Jackson.

The narrative goosesteps its way at a merciless pace, the audience swept along by the device of typewritten announcements emblazoned across Robert Innes Hopkins’ depressingly features-starved set.

The click-click of the keys could also be the chatter of machine guns or the sounds of jackbooted heels snapping to attention. It is a nightmare in which innocence knows no boundaries and wickedness no limits.

Jabez Cheeseman (Bruno) and Colby Mulgrew are magnificent as the boys, condemned by a world of adult designs. They are oases of purity in a sea of ideological putrefaction, the personification of which is Bruno’s father (Phil Cheadle), the commandant who blindly follows orders as one would expect.

We ask the eternal question. How can a person such as this effortlessly transform into that of a loving family man after his day of mass murder?

Boyne’s depiction of the mother struggling to make sense of the nightmare is played with accelerating anxiety by Marianne Oldham, while Ed Brody’s thuggish and repulsive Kotler easily stirs the anger that lies dormant in pit of our stomachs.

Dramatic works that deal with the Holocaust are nothing new. But Boyne’s piece shakes us out of any number of cosy illusions, not least of which is that an entire nation was somehow ignorant of the depravity done in its name.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas runs until Saturday (March 14) and is an absolute must-see.

John Phillpott