Banish from your mind all thoughts of ethereal Indian palaces shimmering in the moonlight. Despite its name, Taj is not about anything vaguely sub-continental, but is in fact about a bunch of first year drama students, and their tutors at a provincial acting school in England. The name is taken from the initials of one of the tutors, Tony A. James.

The play follows six students through their first two terms at the Daisy Guilfold University. As well as ensemble scenes during which the stories develop, each of the characters delivers monologues to the audience about their own secret hopes, desires and feelings. The students are also rehearsing for their end-of-term play. And the real world seems always to be hovering over the proceedings.

The dynamics shift between all those scenarios, so you are never quite sure whether a character is acting as that character, or as another character, or in fact is telling us about the actor’s real self. This intriguing set-up means that the rug is constantly pulled from under your preconceptions.

One of the students, the very strange Candy Paint, gradually becomes the focus of the play. He is completely inept socially, born from the conviction that nobody likes him. As Candy himself points out “people are nice to me only to make life easier for themselves”. This is a cosy little vicious circle from which Candy is unwilling to break. Mind you, I would react in the same way to this bloke given Nick Delvalle’s intense, spooky portrayal, and especially that haircut.

Most of the students, other than Candy, have experience in show business, and Sandy Fizzleworth, well played by Sharon Jones, appears to host a ridiculous series on an obscure TV channel but again, this is something which may or may not be true. Her ambition is to appear on Call My Bluff and deliver the perfect nod when her name is announced. Of such little things are all our lives made up and luckily most of us are able to laugh at them.

Taj himself is one of those desperately young-acting lecturer types, in garish combat pants and T-shirt. The rest of the students seem to have regular student preoccupations, and there is companionship and backbiting aplenty.

The playwright Hugh Allison has provided some interesting and unusual insights into the lives of drama students at University from which he himself has recently graduated.