The old joke “Where would we be without a sense of humour? – Germany” is grossly unfair; nevertheless, I was curious to see how some contemplative Germans would handle a classical French farce, not least because it is such a stylised genre and German theatre is famously gung-ho about original staging. In the event, the subject matter of Eugène Labiche’s 1857 piece is unusually dark for farce; small wonder that such material drew the attention of Elfriede Jelinek, whose 1986 translation is used here.

The driving force of the plot is not sex but murder. Protagonist Lenglumé (Michael Goldberg) wakes up in a fog the morning after a boozy club dinner and finds firstly a strange man in his bed (Mistingue, a fellow diner) and secondly, that the breakfast newspaper reports a murder committed near the dinner venue and clues which place the pair firmly in the frame. Only 90 minutes later does it become clear that the paper in question is several years old; in the meantime, Lenglumé and Mistingue go to the verge of actual murder to try to conceal their supposed guilt.

The air of hungover confusion is given clever form by director Karin Henkel and designer Henrike Engel, who place the action on a revolving cubist set which shows the same room from three different angles. (To make matters more sombre, it is done out as a chapel of rest.) At various moments, Lenglumé or his wife is played by two actors at once, and Justine the maid is tripled throughout. Add the fact that Mistingue often seems to be a kind of Mr Hyde figure to Lenglumé, and you have farce made flesh: instead of the standard bewildering plethora of entrances and exits, we now have a chaos of sets themselves and of actors.

It’s a fascinating vision, and would make for a brilliant production except that it falls at the fence which so often hobbles farce productions: lazy physicality. Henkel shows no understanding that crispness of movement would increase both the humour and the dark grotesquerie. On opening night the funniest bit of business was accidental, as over-enthusiastic drinking led Christoph Franken to wash his moustache free from its moorings. A raft of excellent ideas let down sadly in practice.

Written for the Financial Times.