CHRISTOPHER SMITH “N-joy, n-rich, n-liven!” exclaims the festival programme and Leikin Loppu theatre insists that we should add “n-igmatic”.

CHRISTOPHER SMITH

“N-joy, n-rich, n-liven!” exclaims the festival programme and Leikin Loppu theatre insists that we should add “n-igmatic”.

“Today's special” adds dimensions to reality, stretches our imagination, linking the commonplace with the absurd in a string of lightning fast transformations.

It offers a whirl of action situated somewhere between fun and fright, horror and humour, close observation and boundless fantasy.

The method is mime. Music makes emotions grow, rubber boned athleticism lifts the action to another plain, and songs punch home the points. The scene is a roadside café.

The start is all a matter of waiting and ordinary events until a hopeless struggle with a pair of rubber gloves as the girls start washing-up gives a first hint that there is trouble ahead.

Emerging from beyond the U-bend, it soon assumes the classic pattern of two men fighting over one woman.

They make quite a song and dance over her, and she joins in the struggle. Sausage and mash, prepared, like everything else in this production, with split second timing, is only a momentary diversion.

The truth of the matter, as we are shown before the end, is that two of the characters are inextricably bound together and the interloper's ambitions are destined to go straight back down the plug hole.

t Leikin Loppu was performing at Norwich Playhouse.