An Italian Straw Hat is a nineteenth-century farce with 35 characters. And yet a glance at the cast list shows that there are only five actors. A typo? Or an impossible task?

When I sit down to meet the cast, the first thing I notice is that everyone is grinning. After asking a couple of general questions to get the ball rolling, the ball just keeps on rolling, director and actors expanding on each others’ points as slick as you’d hope them to be onstage. It’s like they’re picking up on cues, and a group dynamic like that bodes well for the stage. Old hand Hugh Stubbins explains their mentality clearly when he says that Ed “hasn’t put together a cast – it’s more of a troupe.” And according to Dominic Biddle, they’re a troupe of actors who also liken themselves to the Avengers in a production taking influence from Family Guy, Fawlty Towers, and (maybe most aptly) the hysterical One Man, Two Guvnors.

While there’s always a taste for the mildly farcical (as stressed by the Oscar Wilde monopoly on May Week shows), it’s always rare you hear about someone putting on an actual farce – a problem that the cast of An Italian Straw Hat  hope they aren’t being too presumptuous in tackling.

Will Peck, the only actor who gets to act the part of a chair (“A disapproving chair,” he hastens to add), talks about how people look down on farce. People can see it as too silly to be worth much attention. And I’m reassured that this production is full to the brim with “buffoonery”.

At this point Olivia Emden (the Scarlett Johansson of the group?) pipes in by saying she always saw farces as loads of people walking through doors or having sex. And I’ve been told this play will, in fact, include explicit use of doors. And a horse playing a trombone. But to get back to the point, Olivia tells me what really makes this play impressive is the multi-role dynamic. The constant exchange of roles makes for a “physically demanding” experience, she says, begging my sympathy (“So much sweating!”). The cast explain their hope that people will appreciate the work behind a play that wasn’t written for only five actors, and requires real physical energy to provide the farcical melodrama in several distinctive characters. Director Edward Eustace stresses what a “difficult medium” farce is, and how polished it needs to be, which might be why farce doesn’t show up too much. Is doing a normal drama just easier? Or does it seem easier for students who pay more attention to plays that are more ‘cerebral’ than practically challenging? Charlie Merriman’s description of “organised chaos” might be too daunting for some.

The key idea in this production seems to be not a farcical take on theatre, but a farcical take on farce. By swapping roles onstage with often nothing but a false moustache to show the change, this farce is stripped down to a kind of extended ‘game’. And that’s the word Hugh uses: “We try and find the game in every single scene.” One role is even shared between actors, depending on who happens to have the relevant prop thrown at them, while one scene has the hanging threat of facing a cream-pie if a prop is dropped. Hugh’s “playing onstage” seems near enough to the mark. Maybe the lack of farces is caused by people taking themselves too seriously and not wanting to be ‘the guy/girl who does farces’. It’s easy to think you need to do a serious play to get taken seriously. And the biggest shame is that often they seem to be right.

Edward is no stranger to the drama scene, but this is his directorial debut. “I don’t have a director’s ilk,” he asserts, before revealing the real reason for putting on the production... just because it sounded fun. Now that’s an attitude to student theatre.

Dominic affectionately calls the production a “farce within a farce”. What do I call it? A meta-farce? Maybe just a better farce? Hopefully a farce to inspire future farces. I’ll find out in Week 2.

An Italian Straw Hat is the Week 2 ADC late show: Wed 30th Jan – Sat 2nd Feb, 11pm.