SHOW: Lovborg’s Women - It suggests a worthy, intellectual production, as does the satirically pretentious narration by a pair of narrators who remind of nobody so much as the bumbling detectives Thompson and Thomson, from Tintin.

CAST: Adrian Collins, Mikkie-Dene Le Roux, Andrew Laubscher, Tinarie Van Wyk Loots
DIRECTOR: Christopher Weare
VENUE: Glennie Hall, Grahamstown

They spout eloquent nonsense, repeated and adapted for comedic effect.

Ostensibly, the aim is to examine the differences between realism and naturalism – two forms of theatre that it’s perhaps possible to really care about if you’re working on your fourth attempt at a Masters in drama and are looking for fresh ways to impress your lecturers.

The filter through which the cast do so is the work of one Jorgen Lovborg, a cult Scandinavian playwright birthed in the mind of Woody Allen (Lovborg’s first
 appearance was in Allen’s 1975 book, Without Feathers).

The material is richly, delightfully absurd, in its original form – the cast perform scenes of the “original” plays (after Chkhov and Ibsen)  – and even more so in their “Reconsidered” format, in which the satire is extended to lovingly mock the preferred performance styles of The Mechanical’s colleagues and competition, including contemporary dance outfit DV8, physical theatre company FTH: K and Brett Bailey’s Third World Bunfight.

The plays from which scenes are performed include I Prefer To Yodel; While We Three Haemorrhage and Mellow Pears and the dialogue in each, fittingly, is utter balderdash.

Lines include, “It’s time to launder everyone’s socks”; themes include brothers fighting over the ownership of a shared disease; details include a character being sent to prison for mispronouncing the word “diphthong”: it’s deeply, deliciously daft.

It’s also hugely entertaining, thanks to the technical brilliance of the performers, and their ability to make such bizarre material, somehow, intellectually stimulating.

 If nothing else, such obvious mockery of theatre theory – as theatre – must drive purists mad, which is reason enough to like it, especially as the project utilises far greater inventiveness than is generally seen on stage, anywhere.

What takes place on stage links the cerebral and the surreal; David Mamet with Graham Chapman.

The nub of it all seems to be: think creatively about what goes on around you, translate that into physical expression and hey, Bob’s your uncle.

It’s a great pity, then that it goes on for perhaps 10 minutes too long, extending to a skit starring caricatures of Lady Gaga and Madonna that would not have been missed were it absent.