Boris Vian, a French, novelist, poet, surrealist and Jazz musician of limited talent. A man who's life ended as it had been lived, surreally when his heart stopped while he watched the film adaptation of his novel I spit on your graves. He was only 39. Such is the basis for Told By an Idiot 's production.

 The play tells the story of Boris Vian (Stephen Harper) and his one true love Ursula (Hayley Carmichael) who meet in a barber shop, connecting over the fact that they both want to look like their favourite jazz musician, despite the fact that they are both white.

 The action has taken its influences from Vian's life, being at times surreal, absurd and using the rhythms of jazz music in the sparse dialogue. All of which is accompanied by live jazz piano composed by the excellent Zoe Rahman, much of which takes on an improvised feel heighten and highlight the onstage action.

 Harper as Vian is an instantly likeable character, including the audience into his life, enabling them to care about his life, loves, and his tragically comic death. He is laid back and very fluid as an actor everything is slick and fluid. Carmichael is the opposite, spikey and jerky in both movement and speech, but together they work wonderfully well, bouncing off each other whether it is in the scripted sections, the wonderful movement sections or the mad-cap improvised sections.

 The simple love story is at times a little too simple, and only the excellent set piece movements keep the action flying along.

 Even with the excellent acting the most amazing thing in this production, without being over powering is Naomi Wilkinson's wonderfully surreal set with the back wall being turned into another floor complete with chairs and a working record player.

 A wonderfully inventive story excellently told by a superb cast.