Louise is at a street parade for the Kaiser when her underpants fall off. She is pretty sure no-one notices but within hours the rumours are all over Dusseldorf and her bullet-headed husband fears for his precious nine-to-five position as a tiny cog in the loud, clanky machine of pre-war German bureaucracy. Forced to sub-divide his modest flat, he is pleasantly surprised by the number of keen, male, would-be boarders lining up to apply. The cruelly neglected Louise is suddenly a star. Her buried desires are awakened. Things rapidly get out of hand.

Suffering from poor translation for years, Jewish satirist Carl Sternheim’s classic 1911 farce has finally found its ideal champion in Steve Martin, whose free and contemporary adaptation combines sparkling wordplay with the kind of laugh-out-loud one-liners of Picasso at the Lapin Agile. And as in that much loved piece (workshopped and premiered by Company B and Playbox), intelligence and stupidity go hand in hand.

Sternheim’s attacks on the comfortable and relaxed classes were banned for endangering public morality long before the Nazis attempted to totally obliterate his memory.