There’s a computer glitch at the box office when I go to collect my ticket and I’m wondering if the character in ‘TED Talks Crimes’ is operating offstage. Seated in BATS Dome, an excited bunch next to me tell me he’s a flatmate. I’m hoping that’s a recommendation.

The set is impressively simple. There’s just a large desk on one side. The lighting is low and remains so for most of the show. Well, after all, its theme is low life, isn’t it?

Enter the giver of the TED talk, Ted (played by Jeremy Hunt). He’s tall, rangy, elegantly suited, complete with Mafia accent and Mafia cronies. Most of us are familiar enough with TED talks to suspect that what follows will be a send up of their sometimes over earnest style and content. A lecture from the desk perhaps.

Ah, but the content here is crime. And as for over earnest, well, our criminal is confessing! His name is Ted, and he’s a high-ranking well-paid Mafia member operating in New York. Lately though, his conscience has been troubling him. “The mark I was making was negative.”

Redemption is necessary. There’s a Don to deal with – a Don who trusts our narrator. Luckily, Ted knows his boss’s Achilles’ heel and sets off first to the library to research, thence to the Yellow Crab Shack and lastly the zoo, where we hear his surprisingly touching confession in the arms of a most unlikely animal. 

Hunt’s stage presence and characterisation are impressive. His accent is entertainingly authentic as are his impersonations of various colleagues. The script (co-written with Ricky Dey) is brilliantly conceived, worded and delivered.

Creator Dastardly Productions have been dastardly to praiseworthy dramatic effect. We may not learn how to pull off the perfect crime, but we do get a solemn warning: “Never piss off a librarian!” 

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