SHOW: One Woman Farce - There are five doors on stage for this brand new collaboration between award-winning comedy actress Louise Saint-Claire (a co-writer here) and writer-director Greg Homann.

CAST: Louise Saint-Claire
DIRECTOR: Greg Homann
VENUE: The Scout Hall,
Grahamstown

You certainly need at least four for a good farce, so you feel you’re in good hands here.

And so it proves, as Saint-Claire plays all four members of a supposedly “normal” Joburg family, plus a bonkers granny, a southern suburbs loan shark and a patient who comes to the mother character for psychotherapy.

Saint-Claire’s speech patterns, body language and mannerisms, each tailored to the different characters, are masterfully controlled.

The mother, Lizzie, is trying her best to keep everything more or less under control, a process so stressful that her neck tendons and the arteries in her temples get an exhausting workout.

Father Des is a largely unsuccessful inventor  –  “the ‘desk-bed’ was a fluke”  –  while painfully earnest son Kyle is a stutterer, daughter Amanda is a “like, whatever” princess who speaks in Twitter acronyms and Nana (an extension of Saint-Claire’s much-loved radio character, Thelma) is a lush with a gambling habit.

Between successfully sketching out each of these disparate characters, Saint- Claire must successfully negotiate a set bristling with struts and corners in order to come out of the right door at the right time as the right person.

 It’s a wonder she doesn’t trip at any point, especially as she makes a point of flashing her audience a cheesy grin as she gallops around the periphery on the way to her next mark.

 The lack of screen between the doors is intentional, and the grin and added bustle increase the energy and charm of the overall production still further.

And when something does go wrong  –  at one point a trailing prop gets caught in the “desk-bed”  –  Saint-Claire has the presence of mind and wit to improvise her way out of trouble.

There are even ways to have two characters on stage at the same time (despite the title of the play).

At one point, Kyle requests that his family practice for “Earth Hour” turning out all the lights and reciting a speech about saving the planet. Nana enters the room and thinks she’s gone blind, and, in pitch darkness, the characters have a speech – it’s impossible to tell that it’s only one person, so seamless are Saint- Claire’s vocal transitions.

Towards the end, all the different threads bottleneck into a crescendo of whatever sound effects Saint-Claire is not responsible for (phones ringing, dogs barking, etc).

It’s the loudest part of the piece and, ironically, the only gap its star gets to take a sip of water, an opportunity accepted in a delightfully cheeky way.

Farces featuring just one actor are not common because they’re phenomenally difficult to pull off.

If this show receives the acclaim it deserves, though, it may spark a new trend.

Pity those trying to follow in Saint-Claire’s footsteps, though – she makes it look very easy, but it’s anything but.

And you may not even get to revel in the craft of it all, because you’ll be doubled over, cackling.

This show is impossible to giggle at; belly laughs are the default response.