One of our original actors sweated so much, his purple suit bled on the stage," recalls Annie Ryan, with the nonchalant air of a director who views energy in much the same way as oxygen.

"I've worked with people who are big drinkers and smokers, and our current cast aren't particularly athletic. But they have to learn the physical side of it quickly, because it's an incredibly demanding piece."

Casualties were always inevitable for Ryan's Corn Exchange company, a ridiculously talented group who perfect the passion of Commedia dell'Arte - a sweaty and anarchic style of theatre embedded in character images and dynamic physicality. She fell for the discipline's ethic to "work its actors like dogs and do anything for a cheap gag".

"It's still the case, I'm afraid," she confesses, nihilistically. "I'm only just copping on to how unusual we are, really. Hopefully, you don't notice the hard work."

Her subjects are a posse of mime showmen, singers, actors and, as the intricate face masks they draw on themselves prove, artists.

Retelling the struggle to establish an Irish National Theatre at the turn of the 20th Century, Dublin By Lamplight trades props and effects for a bare stage and piano accompaniment.

Ryan is all too aware of the knife-edge the technique stands on.

"The audience was taken aback at first," she says. "Then, after a while, they realise, we're in OK hands.' You forget the actors are moving that way because of their emotional state."

Ryan has had a love affair of her own with Irish theatre since arriving in 1995. "It was a place to bring this thing from Chicago. The humour, intelligence and level of fun drew me in here."

It inspired a wild intensity bound by a devotion to the cause. "It's like an order-chaos theory. We can't afford to pay our actors to spend a year becoming improvisers. They just work really, really hard."

  • Starts 7.30pm, Sat matinee 2.30pm, tickets £10-£20. Call 01273 709709