It’s a whimsical strapline: A buddy-comedy about a man who lives in another man’s beard. And it’s skilfully done.  

I’ll lay ‘dollars to doughnuts’, as they say in the classics, that writer-director Shane Adamczak grew up on cartoons and learned to mimic them in his own bizarre made-up stories at an early age. There is a childlike glee in his physical and vocal manifestations as he plays multiple roles as well as the titular Frank, the janitor (do they call them that in Western Australia?) whose assiduous cleaning in a laboratory activates the top-secret scientific device-in-development that shrinks him.

St John Cowcher personifies bearded Al, an amiable Aussie troubadour uni student who has trouble holding down low-rung part-time jobs and has to overcome all sorts of inhibitions to finally ask Christine, from the bakery over the road, out on a date. It’s his beard that Frank inhabits, and Cowcher is the straight man to Adamczak’s crazy guy.

The lively blend of imaginative storytelling, robust singing and physical theatrics keeps the entertainment factor up as the story unfolds: not so much about Frank Allen as the story he tells about Al’s misfortunes and the strategies he – Frank – employs to train him to succeed more in life.

Somehow I assume that amid the surreal antics, a critique of Al’s self-defeating blokey behaviour will emerge. After all we’re in an age of heightened awareness about men who view women as sex objects and/or as convenient appendages to their more important lives. But The Ballad of Frank Allen premiered just over two years ago and there’s something off about its tone.

Disparaging jokes about old ladies and “swampy Victoria”, the objectification of Christine, an Irish busker’s plaintive ‘How Could I Be So Blind?’ lament about Heather (who’s fucking everyone but me), and even Frank’s casual references to missing his wife, suggest an underlying misogyny that’s hard to ignore.

That’s the feeling I’m left with anyway. Make your own judgement. They’re clever performers.

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