If nothing else, I Love Peach Blossom provided me with a completely different 90 minutes to anything I have experienced in a theatre recently. The latest production by Oxford University Chinese Drama Society, it is part thought-provoking think-piece and part deconstructionist comedy. My advice is to save any alcohol for after the performance, as you will need to concentrate.

A married housewife, Yingzi (Bing Su) is having an affair with her neighbour, Feng (Yuchen Xia). Yingzi's husband Ying Zhan (Moyang Chen) doesn't suspect a thing, until he comes home drunk one night, with Feng still in the house. Yingzi misunderstands her lover's sign language, communicated to her from his hiding place in a closet, and attempts to kill her husband. The play then splits, and the actors perform several outcomes to this story, exploring issues of gender, culpability and ethics.

Because of this structure, the play often feels quite fragmented, jarring and, at times, confusing. This is emphasised by the performance being staged in its native language, with subtitles provided for people not familiar with it. Owing to this, and the occasionally clunky, and sometimes obscured, subtitles, I did feel somewhat drained, rather quickly. I knew I should have had that cup of tea before I set out.

On opening night, the play got plenty of laughs, and it was hard to tell whether this was because a lot of the audience were friends of the actors, or whether the play was actually comedic. I did not interpret it as humorous, neither did I laugh, but perhaps this was a cultural issue. Like any kind of culturally specific material, humour does not always travel well.

The actors all gave highly animated performances, and the direction was dynamic, but not flashy. But the use of lighting seemed bafflingly arbitrary. Though I was entertained for the most part, this was not an evening I could say I enjoyed. Yet I think I took away some kind of solemn respect for this very different kind of theatre, and that is recommendation enough.

There are further performances tonight and tomorrow.