Michael Frayn’s new book is the most highbrow TV sketch show ever

Enough of big ideas and grand designs. Instead, here are 30 unusually small ideas from the giant pulsating brain of Michael Frayn. Matchbox Theatre is a collection of tiny playlets, all one-handers or two-handers, designed to be performed in the most intimate theatrical space of them all: your mind.

In ‘Sleepers’, Sir Geoffrye de Frodsham and Lady Hilarye lie motionless in their tomb, and bicker throughout eternity. ‘Since when has he been doing choral Evensong in the crypt?’ ‘Since 1997.’ ‘I’ve never heard any choral Evensong in the crypt.’ ‘You were asleep.’ ‘You’re telling me I slept through that?’ ‘You slept through the second world war…’

Elsewhere we hear the internal monologue of a man in an orchestra who has to play three notes on an E-flat contraphonium in 430 bars’ time. ‘An instrument no one wants to hear, not even the composer.’ In ‘Bing Bong’, one of the best, we are in an airport, where two illicit lovers are trying to sort out their future before their flights leave. But every time one of them says something of real importance, the public address system interrupts them to tell them that Flight DB 473 is now boarding at Gate 71, and neither can hear what the other is saying. This could only work on the page, but it’s very funny.

Frayn, as we know, has enjoyed a long and eminent career as novelist, playwright, screenwriter, translator and freelance philosopher. But under that distinguished carapace there still flows the lifeblood of comedy. Here he seems to be writing for the sheer pleasure of writing. He comes up with a daft idea and he runs with it, but never further than the idea merits. It’s like watching the most abstract, highbrow TV sketch show you can imagine.