A warm welcome from the Oxford Playhouse Plays Out team at George & Delila’s Café in Cowley Road was a reassuring beginning to an event I was rather nervous of attending as I was required to take part myself.

Etiquette is a half-hour ‘experience’ where two people sit at a table in the café and perform the show themselves, unwatched and unnoticed by the customers around you.

Seated at a table for two laid out with unusual looking props, participants are instructed to put on a pair of headphones, from each of which issues a voice telling you what to do and say. The two of you hear different things – you do not know what your partner is being instructed to do – but they interact perfectly. As you move the props about and speak lines, you do have to keep your wits about you to keep up with the taped instructions. But when you get into the swing it works very well.

I won’t relate the plot as half of the fun is the surprises that are unfolded as you work through the show. But I can say that it was haunting, interesting and sometimes made us laugh out loud.

Thankfully no one in the bustling G&D’s seemed to take any interest in what we were doing, and because the story begins in a Paris café, the hubbub and chinking of coffee cups made a terrific soundscape. When it was finished I asked the Oxford Playhouse people if the company who originated the show, ROTOZAZA, were French. “Indeed they are” came the answer.

“That explains a lot!’ I mused.