Improbable Frequency

This show should come with a health warning: do not attempt to digest it if you do not like puns. Luckily I am a pun fan so a play that misuses language in such a creative way has already won me over.

And that's before we get to the songs. Yes, it's a musical. Not just a play with music but a fully fledged, utterly delightful musical (and where's the CD, I cry in despair?).

Well that's all very well but what's it about? Wartime Dublin, neutrality, religion, English spies, IRA arms running, betrayal, code breaking, literature, Irishness, Englishness and - what else? - oh yes: love. Now does that sound anything like Gilbert and Sullivan crossed with Cabaret, apparently written by Tom Stoppard with some help from Monty Python? Well at least that's a pale shadow of what this rich Irish stew throws up.

'Too clever by half' I heard someone muttering as the audience left. Nonsense! When such a splendidly talented company presents you with a comic and musical glory like this then the only response is to rejoice.

Rough Magic seems to have the ability to assemble multi-talented casts who can do everything with breathtaking precision. Here are just a few highlights. Peter Hanly and Lisa Lambe wonderful as the most uncloying, sweetly innocent young lovers you could meet. Cathy White as an 'ber-vamp. Darragh Kelly as Myles na Gopaleen drunkenly punning in song. Louis Lovett, gloriously bouncy as John Betjeman. Dan Gordon libidinously eccentric as Erwin Schrodinger.

Did I mention the music, wittily parodic, try the crossword solvers' dinner song, or the wickedly wrong, get your audience clapping along to a wildly pro-violence, IRA song - now where is that CD?

Then of course there's the set, a bar for most of the time until it suddenly turns into - no, sorry, you'll have to see for yourself.

This is a silly, joyous show that demands that you take your brain along with you, maybe even an expert in improbability theory too if you have one handy. Sheer joy from start to finish.