3 People @ the Cinema at the Covert Theatre

By FRANCIS TILL

3 People is one very racy, very funny bit of work, the kind of thing you hate to see end.

Producer Wade Jackson says in a programme note that the production, which he calls "extreme theatre", was inspired by Jean Louis Barreault's Cinema Game.

It has evolved over six years of performance from an award-winning improvisation to the set piece, directed by James McLaughlin, now on display.

Barreault studied under Decroux at the Dramatic Corporeal Mime School of Paris and went off in a unique direction, one that is rarely seen outside Europe.

Here, it results in a sophisticated approach to inarticulate (not silent) theatre, one in which a scripted run of events provide a comedic plot tree on which performances become the fruit.

These performances, in that metaphor, are meaty, succulent, memorable and bold.

They are also wildly funny, at times ranking high among the best broad comedy I have seen on stage.

There are three protean stories in the work, related only by the cast dynamic (two men, one woman), the setting (an otherwise empty cinema, demonstrated by two rows of seats) and a generally observed substitution of bodily expression for spoken language.

The storylines are light but suffused with excruciatingly acute detail, lifting, like gaudily painted helium balloons, from pedestrian beginnings to absurdist heights. And occasional nudity.

As the only woman, Cath Campbell is quite splendidly the natural focus of all three pieces - the men (Wade Jackson and Paul Paice) orbit her elegantly spun characters like erratic moons.

All of these performers have the extensive and wonderfully sensitive physical repertoires of seasoned character actors, but Campbell also brings an extremely potent, ironic sexuality to this work.

Her performances are riveting and make entirely plausible the headlight-stunned fugue states into which her characters plunge the men.

At least, when they're not busy stunning each other.

Because the show is heading off, by invitation, to Chicago for a run in one of the world's hottest comedy festivals in a few days, where it is already sold out, would-be local audiences will have to move fast. They should.