The house was full, as ever, when 95-year-old Helen (Hellcat) Lamb took the stage at the Camp Jabberwocky studio. The sweltering heat was amplified by the spotlight that ignited her usual white blouse and matching, freshly styled shock of white hair. She looked out into the crowd sternly, and waited for a relative quiet to settle on the room before beginning: “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe . . ..”

And so begins the August play at Camp Jabberwocky, with a recital of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky poem by the camp’s founder. This year’s play, (very) loosely based on the characters and story arc of Jim Henson’s 1986 cult classic, Labyrinth, which famously starred David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King, was the typical low-budget, high-energy affair. Peter Bradeen took the role of Jareth, dressed in a shining, opalescent wig and cowboy boots, hamming up the role of antagonistic, demonic, rock-star babysnatcher. The creative costuming and inventive use of cardboard for all manner of props rivalled Jim Henson’s Creature Factory in terms of creativity.

After Magic Dance, a song taken directly from the original, the script began to diverge, playing up the strengths of the cast and crew. Sisters Sarah and Dorian Lamb, granddaughters of Hellcat, who spent their summers growing up at the camp while their father, John Lamb, served as camp director, performed a ballet with campers Gary Grove, Cyril Brigish and Sammy Colmer. The juxtaposition of the Lamb sisters’ grace and skill (Sarah is a principal ballet dancer in the Royal Ballet, London) with the complete lack of such in their extremely enthusiastic male partners made for a comedic moment that could not have been scripted by Charlie Chaplin himself.

Later, Bekah Larko and Keegan Colmer sang a duet on Angel, originally recorded by Sarah McLachlan, a poignant moment that had many in the audience shedding a tear.

After several more scenes and songs that eventually managed to complete the story of the Labyrinth, reuniting the kidnapped baby Toby with his erstwhile sister against the designs of the increasingly agitated Goblin King, the entire cast assembled for an encore performance of, against all odds, Jai Ho, the closing song in the Bollywood crossover film Slumdog Millionaire, complete with brilliantly choreographed dance movements. Several more encores followed, including a version of David Bowie’s Modern Love, accompanied by hand drums, and finally, Journey’s Anyway You Want It. The play closed with a slideshow, bringing calls of “awwww” and more than a few bursts of laughter from the crowd, with an ice cream social following. Indeed, Saturday night’s performance confirms that things are much the same as they’ve always been at Camp Jabberwocky, which is to say they remain entirely unpredictable.