Four performers, 139 roles, a show that 'brought the house down'

Encore Theatre Company's new production - which arrived at the Earl Arts Centre last week - is a staging that lends weight to comedy's credentials as a place for powerhouse performances, and for satire's seat at high-art's table.

What it's exactly about doesn't too much matter; the show is a breakneck, frantic farce that adores and lambasts the spy genre in equal measure. It's both pastiche and parody, courtesy of slapstick technical elements and absurd characters.

Its four-hander cast - of Jesse Apted, Ashley Eyles, Matt Harris and Aaron Beck - flit, stomp, romp and roar across the stage in 120-minutes of accent-infused hilarity with its Scottish, early-century setting.

It opens with its protagonist, the bored man-about-town Richard Hannay (Apted), who laments the insipid nature of his life in boring old London, though not for long. He's soon embroiled in stopping a plot to steal British military secrets.

Hannay ends up accused of a murder he didn't commit and heads to Scotland to save the country from an unseen network of spies - one revealed in due course. And what ensues is a now-recurring motif for the thriller: the innocent man-on-the-run.

But, that's enough plot elements. They're often vestigial, like holdovers from its long-ago origins as a 1915 novel by John Buchan, then a '35 screenplay by Alfred Hitchcock. Steps comes across more - and this is to its strength - as a series of spy set pieces.

It's a skit show where classic genre scenes become opportunities for jokes, not for high-drama - although the high-drama is often funny on its own. Props are tossed on stage in slapstick style, actors change character on stage like changing hats, literally - Harris and Beck are exceptional in this, bouncing off one another - and Scottish accents provide countless guffaws. The physicality of the show, and its actors' successes with it, are the great strength of Encore's Steps.

With the plot keeping the show cohesive, the actors can revel, able to focus on their comedic presence in full. Harris is the stand out in this, though Apted's intonations are brilliant, too. The role often positions him as more of the "straight man" to the play's universal, absurd skew. The few moments he does break from that mould, though, are some of its best - particularly when he's matched with Harris.

In one scene, where Apted's Hannay runs from Harris as a dullard policeman, he grabs a frame from the stage floor and hops through. In the rules of this universe, he's left the interrogation room - and gaming the rules of this universe, he takes the window frame with him. The officer, now locked in the room, looks on aghast, the audience guffawing.

Despite the missing window, the Earl Art's structural didn't seem under any scrutiny. That was until Harris shouted: "Stop that window!"

It really brought the house down.