If you like your plays to be clearly delineated between cast and spectators, with a real plot that everybody sticks to, then 6 Characters in Search of an Author will annoy the hell out of you.

There is a script, actually – in fact there are two: the one some actors are about to rehearse on stage, and the one brought to them when an Italian family arrives begging for their story to be told.

This production is a classic old play by Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello, which local director Sibusiso Mamba has retranslated in parts to add a South African slant. It’s a zany romp with an anarchic twist, shot through with serious elements, and I found it enormous fun and absolutely engrossing.

It begins with a second-rate theatre company preparing to stage a Pirandello play, with Kate Normington playing Kate Normington and Desmond Dube playing the director of the Dube Theatre company. It’s lovely how the characters send themselves up, with Normington playing a prima donna determined not to be upstaged and Dube trying to keep control over his wayward, sadly untalented cast.

Then the Italians arrive with a tragic story of death, betrayal and incest that they are determined to re-enact in the hope of finding an author who can resolve the conflict and write a different ending.

David Butler is the most switched on of the sometimes motley crew, commanding as the husband and father of the dysfunctional Italians. Chantal Stanfield is also striking as his daughter-turned-reluctant prostitute when the divided family finds itself impecunious.

The production elements behind the show are excellent, with perfect lighting by Thapelo Mokgosi and sound effects by Ntuthuko Mbuyazi, a set by Karabo Legoabe that gives plenty of space and costumes by Nthabiseng Makone that include freakishly headless children carried by the Italian family.

The funniest moments come when the “actors” try to impersonate the “real life” characters, hamming up their scenes delightfully and drawing scorn from Butler’s character. Why do you need actors when you already have the genuine characters, he asks, as one of the philosophical themes running through the show.

Sometimes it feels like there are too many people hanging around on stage, adding to the disorganised element that jarred with some of the audience members. It’s also two hours long without an interval, but for me the time flew by.

Perhaps some of the serious, more meaningful themes are lost in the folds of a play within a play, since in the programme notes Mamba says the lack of communication between the family members and the tragedies that tear them apart reflect how we need to have honest and difficult conversations in South Africa to heal the rifts.

I didn’t leave with any sense that the drama unfolding within the play has a great relevance in our society today. But I did have a huge laugh at this madcap show that’s very clever and entirely different from pretty much everything else that makes it to our stages. DM

6 Characters in Search of an Author runs at The Market Theatre until July 24.

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