Metal light towers form the portal to this appallingly sleazy hell, and its flames are Mark O'Maley's searchlights and red glare playing over "Britney" (Christy Lee) with her wig of yellow ribbons. Led by the singer's "friend" (Nichole Canuso), a fickle, black-clad horde of demons (Headlong plus local recruits) now worship, now revile their bubblegum-pop princess. The sinisterly smarmy emcee-manager-Satan (Andrew Simonet), who controls events, mostly from a tower, makes us accomplices in a cyclical process ("The things we make famous are the things we most want to destroy"), while the voices of other pop icons bubble up in Rick Henderson's score.

Simonet, Amy Smith, and David Brick collaborate in creating the Philadelphia-based Headlong's pieces, with contributions from company members (including Kate Watson-Wallace and Lee Etzold). In the past, their smart collective gaze has lit on Star Wars, James Joyce's Ulysses, and suburban backyards. In Britney's Inferno, they find terrifically clever ways to show adulation and its decay ("Boredom is the new anger," Simonet tells us). Holding a mic that conceals a video camera, Lee slowly revolves in a circle of admirers, cueing the fans she points it at to scream and jump up and down; their images appear on three suspended screens. The same camera projects close-ups of her famous belly, while the chorus members pull up their shirts and inspect their own. Among other ordeals, "Britney" is wrapped in plastic, tossed into the reaching hands of a supine and hostile moshpit, and undergoes a hilarious session with a choreographer (Watson-Wallace), who uses absurd metaphors to turn the blank-faced Barbie doll into a virgin temptress and make her body say both "Look at me!" and "What are you looking at?" In the piece's slightly inconclusive ending, pink hearts of light swirl on the floor, while glittery snow falls from above. Ms. Spears, it could happen.