It was rather odd to walk into an exact replica of my great-grandmother's living room to an up-tempo version of Rule Britannia. It was even more perplexing to then sit in said living room for 45 minutes, watching as a two minute skit from a 1970s smoker was dragged out and beaten to death from every possible angle. Loving Leticia, the latest offering from the Pembroke Players, is a 'comic' pastiche that draws out every ubiquitous, hackneyed Pride and Prejudice cliché in the name of farce. To summarise, the eponymous Leticia likes to read books and is in love with some generic fop who wants to join the navy (cue some raunchy sailor jokes). She's then kidnapped by a lustful villain, whom her fop promptly wallops on the shoulder with a plastic sword, and all is well again. What fun.

On the plus side, the cast's energy made the play at least watchable, rather than just painful. Leticia's nightmare mother (Madeleine Hammond) was as shrill as any copycat Mrs Bennet need be, and Ben Slingo evoked some genuine laughs as the disillusioned priest, Father Flect. The fact that the funniest character in this play was largely unscripted speaks volumes about the quality of the writing: as the forebodingly macabre butler, Christopher Stanton had his audience tittering with some decent facial expressions alone. The central problem was Leticia herself: Annwyn Eades undermined any potential titters she might have won by persistently smirking and repressing giggles. If there's ever a sure-fire way to irritate an already unimpressed reviewer, laughing at your own bad jokes will do it.

I suppose the saving grace of Loving Leticia was that it never pretended to be great. Its fatal flaw was that it pretended to be funny: cheap, easy gags, pantomime humour and a lacklustre script do not good comedy make. Though the play is presented as a bit of lighthearted fluff, farce can, and should, be better than this.