Fiat Lux presented Nouvelles Folies to a full house in the Purcell Room. From the moment the lights went up on three beach huts, set against a sea wall, the audience were able to enjoy a clearly evoked and humorous piece about the seaside. The huts were home to a group of four local Breton fisherman, a solitary sailor and a young couple of tourists, who we first see being misdirected out of their way by one of the local Bretons.

The piece sketches the rivalry between the locals and the tourists mainly along male ego lines. But it is not really interested in narrative, indeed the slight story of the woman and her partner, and the Breton with a strange laugh, suggests a style and characterisation that the piece never intends to pursue.

What we are presented with is some strong ensemble work, good set pieces and routines – such as when all the performers flap and rustle the newspapers they are reading as a wind rises, or when we see their mounting reaction and horror to the sea coming in.

But there is no danger and no demands are made on us. The audience enjoyed it, but I had the feeling of being at the seaside or in a park on a sunny afternoon – pleasant and it passed the time. Perhaps that is enough, but the response to the one truly anarchic piece of comedy, when a crucifix procession behind the fence is disrupted by the pigs that have been cleverly set up some time before, would suggest that this is not the case. Now to have started with that anarchy...