Silver slash, naked mannequins, clear plastic chairs, a water cooler, a British Isles rug – welcome to the newsroom, the well-oiled machine of monumental broadcasts.

Little Bulb’s latest show is a kind of physical comedy sit-com with the comic twist that all the (black-legginged, bare-footed) characters express themselves not only through the sort of tit-for-tat dialogue familiar from a hundred-and-one sketch comedy shows, but also with cod expressive-dance moves. There is a more than a hint of classic Spymonkey and Peepolykus here – although I have to, in all honesty, say that those older, wiser companies have the clowning and physical comedy skills to pull off this sort of thing, and I’m not convinced Little Bulb have (or even want to have) – postmodern parody is the name of the game here. The young audience are delighted by it all, but I find it hard not to draw unfavourable comparisons.

Where Little Bulb win out is in their choice of soundtrack music for their eccentric dances (starting majestically with Jon and Vangelis ‘I’ll Find My Way Home’ and ending magnificently with the Cleo Laine cover of ‘Send in the Clowns’), and in the design/sceneography – the elements listed above are just the opening gambit, by the end of the show they’ve been augmented by bubble machines, big metal fans, rubber animal masks, Margaret Thatcher costumes, a unicorn head, and numerous glitter wigs and false moustaches. There are some fantastic visual tableau in the piece – breathtakingly funny, leading me to wish there was more of this and less of the sketch comedy palaver.

What’s it all about? It’s a farce about 1980s cultural obsessions. Yuppies, media jobs, alien abductions, electro-pop, leotards, OHPs, loads-of-money, networking, powerpointing, conflict analysis, fitness videos – it’s all here, its all parodied. Director-performer Alex Scott seems in his element, equally happy as a mullet-head or a unicorn. Claire Berresford is at least on the road to having the clowning skills needed to pull off this sub-Spymonkey scenario. And she can dance, so her parodies of dance come off. The others are personable and occasionally shine, but for my taste it is all too far down the sketch-comedy road of humour and not far enough down the truly skilled physical comedy/clown road. I realise, though, from the tumultuous reception they receive that I’m a bit out of kilter with the majority vote –and perhaps just not Little Bulb’s target audience.