Auditorium

Think Six Characters In Search Of An Author mixed with Being John Malkevich, written as a farce by Philip K Dick, and you'll get a faint idea of the tone and style of this new work by the company behind last year's Play On Words.

Guy's bookshop is, not to put too fine a point on it, a dismal failure. Staff and family's sexual and financial shenanigans are even more of a mess than the shelves. But then Guy sticks his head into the storeroom and sees – an Edinburgh Fringe audience.

Soon all of the characters are using this portal to a human gold mine for their own particular ends. Individuals are chosen to act as spies, decoys, sex objects or simply to help hide things from prying eyes. Some of the audience are not even innocents.

Auditorium is a gloriously diverting, sprawling, anarchic mess of a play (and I do mean that as a compliment). It moves at a cracking pace and is often very funny indeed. Its use of the audience is very clever. Some are clearly primed to respond at particular points, many are just picked on and completely enter into the spirit of it all. To top it all there is a plant so convincing that it took me a long time to realise that he was a set-up.