I’ve never seen Shakespeare’s Timon Of Athens. I’ve never read the script, have only the haziest understanding of its plot, and certainly couldn’t talk you through any of its themes. If you rank plays by how often they’re performed, it’s surely in the Bardic relegation zone. But it’s got something to do with bankrupting your erstwhile friend, and therefore – actor and creator Emily Carding seems to have decided – clearly needs re-imagining as a giant game of Monopoly.

This is a barking-mad yet indisputably genius idea, which Carding takes gloriously literally. There really is a big red die, there really is a (sort-of) board, and members of the audience really are nominated to hold Monopoly-style playing pieces, which also confer cameo parts in the play. It soon becomes clear that it won’t make any difference what numbers we roll, but inability to escape your fate is a fittingly Shakespearean gambit. And the parody of Monopoly is funny in itself; I particularly enjoyed the graphics on the playing track, which combine faux-Elizabethan motifs with the modern game’s oh-so-familiar visual style.

Resplendent in both a period ruff and a Mr Monopoly hat, Carding makes a spirited and occasionally wild-eyed MC. The playful theme soon expands into party games, some of which draw the whole audience in; bags of sweets stand in for cash, emphasising the enrichment and impoverishment that form the backbone of Timon Of Athens’ plot. As I discovered in post-show consultation with Wikipedia, the games are in-jokes based on moments from script, and Carding manages the energy well – permitting a pleasing level of shambles while ensuring the wheels never truly come off.

It’s fun – really fun – and I did emerge with a basic understanding of what the original story is all about. I heard a few Bardic lines as well, since Carding occasionally finds opportunities to address her contestants with thematic snippets of the play. The problem is that it’s quite the mental back-flip from party-game hijinks to iambic pentameter, and by the time I’d switched my synapses to Shakespeare Mode, many of those short extracts had already passed me by. It was only towards the end, when the fun stops but the story doesn’t, that I found the time and inclination to properly tune in.

But here’s the thing. I’ve had, let’s say, forty years of life when I could plausibly have read Timon Of Athens, and it’s never got remotely near the top of my to-do list. Yet today, as a direct result of seeing this show, I’ve at least called up a plot summary and glanced over the most important scenes. If dressing it up as a demented board game is what it took to get me to engage with it, then I can’t complain too loudly that the engagement isn’t deep. Timonopoly is an oddball show to be sure… but it’s well worth rolling the dice on.