What do you want from a comedy play? a) a good laugh or b) the meaning of life? The Joke has had mixed reviews, but having just caught up with it this feels that it is because it falls down on b). It certainly doesn’t let you down on a).

Will Adamsdale, Lloyd Hutchinson and Brian Logan* (the trio also devised it) play the proverbial Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman who don't so much walk into a bar as get trapped on a stage. They want to get out but it seems the only option to is create a joke. They are not just stuck onstage, they are also stuck inside a painfully corny and possibly racist gag. 

The scene is set then for some neat interplay as the threesome tease out the nature of and need for national identity. Pretty timely with the EU Referendum coming up. Hutchinson’s character turns out to be from Northern Ireland and is not keen on daft Irishman quips. Logan’s character dons a ginger wig but is not keen on playing up Caledonian cliches. Adamsdale sweats buckets as the frustrated middle class Englishman.

Along the way there are lots of lovely gags, both verbal and physical as comic tropes are played out at a furious pace. They dance, they do knockabout, they bash up inflatable palm trees and at one point they sing a mash-up of songs that define their nation, from Oasis to folk songs.

Do they get out of the room? Well that would be telling. Do the punchline unearth the meaning on life? As hinted at the start of this review, not really, but then maybe that is asking too much. And the action does slightly fizzle out towards the end. But even if this doesn’t come up with any existential answers it will make you laugh. And isn’t that what a joke is supposed to do?

Until June 4. Tickets here.

*Comedy Critic of The Guardian