If you’re going to put on an absurdist play about pandemonium, the apocalypse and table manners, why not use a converted swimming pool as the auditorium? It’s Dada-esque.

This deftly-executed exercise in miming and timing, encased in a soundscape of bleeps, scrapings and eerie ramblings, is inspired by the T. S. Eliot poem of the same name; it, too, features a troubled, introspective male transfixed by a busty, guffawing female companion, but instead of an old boy with trembling hands who interjects to offer the couple tea, the waiter (Lucinka Eisler) here is angular, androgynous and almost entirely wordless (though not dumb). Glaring at the diners and the audience from behind glinting spectacles as she rearranges cutlery in a vain attempt to shut out the voices prophesying doom, she is the intimidating linchpin of this Inspector Sands and Stamping Ground Theatre production.

The man (Ben Lewis) is a social scientist who might be dismissed as a typically dull nerd – he’s diffident, with slicked back hair and prominent pale socks – were it not for the fact his research into mental disorders hides (or spurs) the unravelling of his own senses. He is fascinated, yet occasionally repelled, by his colleague (Giulia Innocenti), an events manager whose extrovert personality does little to mask her insecurity. By the end, she is literally going bananas. Lewis’s character is more interesting, and it is he who provides most of the belly laughs; he prowls amid the audience – touching, inquiring, seeking solace.

It’s not always hysterically amusing, and for all the Edinburgh Fringe zaniness, it’s bitty. The end could even be described as weak (I overheard one man ask a member of staff “Is it finished?” as people started to leave). Ironically, Lewis's mention of his research including the “1967 Singapore penis panic” prompted loud chortles – yet the event, and others like it, is well-documented. Occasionally, life is stranger than fiction.