When Sir Charles Goodknight delivers a command performance, the summons usually comes from Queen Victoria herself. But the haughty British thespian is in for a shock: he’s on tour to Leadville, a rough-and-ready Colorado mining town, and the only commands are coming from the cheap seats upstairs. Worse still, he has to share the stage with Californian crowd-pleaser Mrs Twelvetrees, in a contest he predicts will become a “PT Barnum circus”. And yup, that’s exactly what happens. You’ll enjoy it.

There’s a pantomime quality to Sir Charles’s arrival – in character as Richard III, but dressed like Nosferatu – which sets the tone nicely for an hour of verbal knockabout. The immersion works well: a few lucky audience members are equipped with props, and we’re all read the riot act by theatre owner Billy, who also serves as ringmaster for the Bardic games. The spectacle could easily slip into bear-baiting, but it’s subtler and cleverer than that; the people of Leadville have genuine civic pride, and planned to receive Sir Charles with appropriate respect. But the declamatory style fashionable in England doesn’t land well here, and the straight-talking miners don’t hide it.

The setup goes on for longer than it might. (“You folks wanna see some action?” shouts a local from the gallery; by that point, yes, I really did.) But once the games get underway, they’re entertainingly nerdy and gleefully overblown; the pair trade Shakesparean insults, stage elaborate death scenes, and do a quickfire round of “name that script” which we’re all invited to play. It loses a little shape at times – the trick is to look chaotic without actually tipping over the edge – but the fun is infectious, and the momentum builds nicely throughout.

Neither Goodknight nor Twelvetrees is all that great an actor, if we judge them by the tastes of our modern day, but the contrasting styles sneak in some interesting points about how expectations of high art have changed. And if ultimate détente between the warring factions arrives a touch too glibly, it’s the right kind of buoyant ending for a shamelessly frothy show.

But hidden amidst all this is a character study, and the character we’re studying is Billy. We learn more about him, and by extension the people of Leadville, than we do about either of the out-of-town pretenders: and we hear how crucial his knowledge of Shakespeare is to his outlook and his life. If I got into a Bard-off with any of the townsfolk, I’d be the one who was slain. It’s a gentle reminder to check our assumptions about people we don’t often mix with – and that message isn’t froth at all.