Created in a living room in Southend by Darren Ruston, Elena Clements and Michael Ward, Theatre of Heaven and Hell revive Italian playwright Dario Fo’s One Was Nude and One Wore Tails at The Hen and Chickens Theatre in Islington. The small pub theatre is a splendid home for Fo’s one-act farce.

The company are dedicated to producing absurdist plays, and they reprise Fo’s own ethos of recovering ‘illegitimate’ forms of theatre with an avid gusto. Directed by Ward, the fool-headed ensemble act out the story of an indecent ambassador and his escape from the scene of a love affair. Nude, he flees the bed of his lover and takes refuge in a wheelie dustbin belonging to a rather gormless road sweeper. Upon the discovery of this immodest gentleman, the two men corkscrew into a philosophical debate whilst trying to find some evening dress for the offender in his birthday suit.

Set on a street, the stage is littered with crushed newspapers and empty Lucozade bottles. There is an outdoor bench parked downstage left, and a gentleman (Ward), sporting a felt trilby hat and a snow-white goatee, plays the accordion as the audience take their seats. An opening number sees the cast of five actors singing and dancing with a cockney twang and brooms in the style of Dick Van Dyke’s ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ chimney sweep in Mary Poppins. Staccato foghorns interrupt the chorus to mask a rogue expletive, a device that is used consistently throughout the piece to underline its pantomime humour.

The production itself feels dated, like a game of ‘What’s in The Box?’ from an episode of Dick & Dom in Da Bungalow, a CBBC television series which first aired in 2002. The Naked Man (played by Ruston), oozes the same obvious playfulness harboured by that presenting duo and maintains impeccable comic timing throughout. In one particular scene between the road-sweeper (played by Nicholas Bright) and a patrolman (Brian Eastty) – a fight that looks like it has been ripped from a manual of ‘Stage Combat for Dummies’ – The Naked Man finds himself caught in the crossfire with a left hook to the face. This makes for laugh-out-loud comedy, as does the cheeky surprises that are produced from the depths of his bright yellow dustbin – a comic device that is recycled precisely the right number of times.

However, this boisterous humour can become haphazard at times, much like the inconsistent elevator music that blasts through every other scene change, too loud for comfortable spectatorship.

As far as absurdist theatre goes, this is of a good standard and does exactly what it says on the tin (or dustbin). That being said, this kind of show is most definitely reserved for those with brazen theatrical taste buds.

One Was Nude and One Wore Tails is playing The Hens and Chickens Theatre until March 18.