Created by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, "Stomp!" first opened in 1991 in Britain and swept across the world's stages, winning awards everywhere.

Its concept is as bizarre as it is unique: eight actor/dancer/musicians weave a series of plot-less vignettes using a wide variety of every-day objects as musical instruments: brooms, match boxes, cigarette lighters, metal tape measurers, plastic bags, the show's signature trash cans, and so on — including kitchen sinks.

Who would think water-cooler canisters could make such lovely sounds? Who would think of tuning rubber construction pipes? Imagine the published titles for these pieces: "Oil Drum and Box Quartet," "Sink Ensemble."

On paper, it sounds crazy; on stage, it's genius.

Of course, musicians have always experimented with sounds, but it was the innovative combination of theater/dance/music in "Stomp!" that captured imaginations and truly demonstrated — for professionals and nonmusicians alike — those old sayings that "music is everywhere" and "music is a language."

For an hour and half, performed with no intermission, the performers "talk" to each other and the audience without uttering a single word.

The performers, chosen from a diverse pool of 12 (including one from Hawai'i), create distinct personas that interact, compete, show off and clown around. Those who have seen the show before will recognize many of the vignettes, but the performers have changed and it is the individuals' details that captivate.

"Stomp!" creates its own wonderful-bizarre world on stage, but it also mirrors our world by celebrating individuality within community and by incorporating a variety of cultural traditions, from body-percussion to tap dance to layered rhythms.

Its vignettes capture universal experiences, such as trying to read a newspaper amid distractions. One in particular seems to represent the process Cresswell and McNicholas must have gone through to create "Stomp!": Three people sitting on a curb take turns rummaging through a garbage bag, exploring the possible sounds of cast-off every-day objects, and finding their relationships shift with what they find.

The relationship that changes the most is the one between performers and audience.