PART serious debate, part crackpot comedy, I Am Shakespeare is wholly a one-off in the theatre world.

The debate part comes in the play’s theme, which questions the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.

To explore the question, actor/ director Mark Rylance – who also scripted – decided to present it as the subject of a webcam chat room conducted from his garage by nerdy teacher Frank Charlton (played by Mark Rylance).

Thanks to atmospherics and a computer blip, some of the leading contenders for authorship appear one by one in a puff of smoke in the garage.

The first of several theatrical gimmicks is to display a mobile telephone number above the stage which anyone in the audience can call to question anyone on the stage at any time.

It sounds fun and the performers responded well to the few calls which were made from the auditorium, but it does have the disadvantage of holding up the flow of action on stage.

Frank also has a webcam with pictures of himself and his show displayed on screens in the theatre, another gimmick which starts off quite amusingly but ultimately gets distracting, so much so that the production abandons the idea for long stretches.

Actors head into the auditorium to talk to audience members and this with other audience involvement produces a lot of jollity and the sporting Playhouse audience was only too happy to take part.

Meanwhile, the comedy becomes increasingly anarchic, reaching an apogee when a policeman bursts in on the scene and the actors on stage explain that they are only actors on a stage and the policeman is, too.

Amid all this, Frank delivers many “facts” to prove Shakespeare did not write the plays, aided by his gormless neighbour Barry (Sean Foley) who acts as a sort of Watson to Frank’s Sherlock Holmes.

It’s a giddy night out with four writing suspects – Shakespeare himself, Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford and Mary Sidney – all making zany contributions.

The conspiracy theories are all quite enchanting, but never advanced enough, so it was no surprise that the audience vote at the end came firmly down on Shakespeare as the writer of his own plays.

philkey