In Lent last year, Fred Ward directed Les Justes, a play by French Absurdist Albert Camus, and was out of his depth. Having moved on to the greener Gallic pastures of Dada-Surrealism, he seems to have found steadier footing. If You Please is an unexpected delight, a perfect bitesize hour of the bizarre, though any more might have been an ordeal. I am impressed by Ward’s following his directorial nose for the Absurd and Surreal, as this is no easy path to follow, but his perseverance has finally borne fruit.

The play is made up of three acts, each taking a clichéd theatrical scenario, and putting a characteristically Dada spin on it. The first brings us an infidelity plot between lovers Paul Inspector and Valentine, though Fergus Blair and Georgia Wagstaff do little to convince us of any chemistry, seeming to talk past one another. Blair’s delivery is occasionally flat and prosaic, lacking the associative poetry that Wagstaff brings to her own lines: ‘I am as near to you as the ground,’ she muses breezily. Occasionally Wagstaff’s over-zealousness threatens to overpower the subtle humour of the situation, though generally the balance is carefully held.

Undoubtedly the star of the show was Jon Porter as the magical Monsieur L’Etoile, a private detective with a mind both brilliant and maniacally cruel. Olivia Stocker complements him perfectly as the smirking, slinky Typist, and maximises the comic potential of her character wordlessly. The drama is abrupt and disjunctive, with characters just as likely to burst into rhyming couplets (Juliet Griffin’s The Lady) as extreme violence.

Yannah Nightingale gives us a well-set stage, with small details such as the typewriter, plush upholstered chairs and an antique-looking globe giving us just enough hints of an atmosphere. Though simply a happy accident, it seems oddly appropriate for the play to take place in the whitewashed floors and strange snow-like drapery that are the debris of mainshow The Snow Queen. Setting off the whole performance was some great jaunty piano music, for which kudos to Chirag Shah.

The third and final act takes us to a chance meeting between The Young Man Maxime (Will Allen) and prostitute Gilda (Katie Polglase). There is a rawness to the encounter which suggests more a clash of sensibilities than a meeting of characters: Maxime’s fierce creativity comes up against Gilda’s wan disillusionment. The effect is slightly grating and over-earnest, though is rescued by Polglase’s fabulous grouchiness, deterring Maxime’s advances by telling him, ‘I’ve got the syph’. There was something reassuringly real about Polglase that stopped the surreality from becoming saccharine.

The jarringness of If You Please is something audiences simply have to be (and I am reluctant to use this phrase) in the mood for, as is ever the way with Surrealism, otherwise it will simply seem inane. As Surrealism, however, it was well done, although the comedy could have been more obvious, particularly in the first and third acts. The cast are straight-faced, but, with the exception of Porter, simply not silly enough, and the hint of earnestness is poison to this play. A brave attempt, generally well-executed, though ever so slightly wet.

If You Please plays at the ADC until Saturday, 11pm