Ciarán Dowd review: Quickfire wit from an absurdist Zorro

Ciarán Dowd’s Don Rodolfo is truly a show for all seasons. Well, two at least.

This summer it wowed crowds at the Edinburgh Fringe and bagged the Edinburgh Comedy Awards’ Best Newcomer prize. It now reaches wintry London and feels like the perfect crowdpleasing adult panto with its daft audience interaction and gleeful sense of absurdity.

Dowd, who is also in sketch group Beasts, plays Rodolfo, a swaggering black-clad Zorro-like swashbuckler. Or, to give his full name, Don Rodolfo Martini Toyota. Yes, it gets as silly as that very quickly indeed as we soon hear about his epic trek across Europe hunting down his six-handed nemesis to avenge the death of his father.

This is a piece that is low on production values but ultra-high on quickfire fun. There are songs, gasp-worthy twists, film references, tales of cheese addiction and a terribly corny Spanish accent. Rodolfo shuttles between cartoon cod-Andalucian and Dowd’s real Irish brogue as he brags about his rapier skills: “I was invincible. I could not be vinced.”

The star takes great pleasure in sending up his deluded, narcissistic character, who has a habit of burning houses to the ground for no apparent reason. Every scene is performed in a playful, knowing style from the opening Errol Flynn duel to the final payoff via nods to Don Juan and Don Quixote.

There are echoes of other comic creations too, notably Rik Mayall’s Flashheart in Blackadder. Yet what this lacks in originality it more than makes up for in self-mocking gusto.

If you want to be pretentious you could argue that his misplaced machismo is a post-#metoo critique of masculinity. But don’t analyse or play spot the reference, just relax and enjoy the swordsman with the sharpest gags in town.

Until January 12