Yvona, Princess of Burgundia, one of the most acclaimed plays by the late Witold Gombrowicz, is on at London’s Network Theatre, Waterloo as part of the Sturdy Beggars Theatre Company's Brain Drain Season.

The company describes Gombrowicz’s absurd black comedy in its publicity material as “Crown Prince Philip decides to alleviate his boredom by proposing to the most repulsive girl in the kingdom - the mute, sickly Ivona.”

With an all-male cast, the production is directed by Kos Mantzakos and produced by Hugo Thurston. The music is by Polish composers, from Chopin,  Ogiński and Jarzębski to Lutosławski and Preisner.

Reviewers in London have picked up on the camp nature of the production.

“Kos Mantzakos’s all-male cross-dressing production looks to panto for its dragged-up look and camp tone,” writes Jason Best in The Stage.

The main character is a phantom-like creature, her ugliness and silence holding up a mirror to others’ hidden vices, provoking disgust and desire in equal measure.

Set in a corrupt Royal Court - obsessed with superficial propriety, but secretly seething with intrigue - the play explores the hilarious (and ultimately deadly) consequences of this impulsive betrothal.

As Ivona unbalances the family’s carefully constructed world, they fixate on erasing her very existence. […] With its absurd humour, deliberately florid language and biting social satire, Yvona is like a Shakespeare play seen through Alice’s looking glass’.

“Mantzakos’s staging is overlong but the performers sustain their arch manner impressively, creating abundant laughs amid the grotesquerie. And with a royal wedding [in the UK] in the offing, Gombrowicz’s satire couldn’t be timelier,” writes The Stage.

The play is at the Network Theatre Waterloo for a four-week season until Sunday, January 30.

One of the most prominent 20th-century Polish writers, Gombrowicz died in 1969 at the age of 65.

His major works include the novels Cosmos and Pornography, the Diaries and the plays Yvona, Princess of Burgundia (translated into 33 languages) and  The Marriage.  (mk/pg)