COME on be honest, surreal comedy just isn't that funny.

Thankfully the deft hand and warped vision of playwrite Alan Bennett ensures that Kafka's Dick - a play about a Czech writer who finds himself transported into a contemporary Leeds suburb - is very, very funny indeed.

But that's not to say that the Freehold Theatre Company didn't deserve every laugh which they charmed out of the audience at the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal.

The cast was excellent, from Peter Sampson's portrayal of insipid insurance man Sydney to the convincing presence of Kyle Oram as the pale intellectual Kafka, they didn't put a foot wrong.

Sydney and his frustrated wife Linda find their world turned upside down when Franz Kafka and his biographer Max Brod arrive in their front room.

Throw in a tortoise and a pensioner, who is determined to prove he hasn't lost his marbles through periodic demonstrations of his in depth knowledge of Kafka studies, and you have the makings of a distinctly odd-ball "intellectual" comedy.

Bennett's play deflates the precious citadel that is Kafka and his critics without detracting from the writer's unique genius.