While the lacy red corsets are certainly burlesque, the scene which greeted us at the Nightingale kept the grotesque well hidden.

Who, after all, has anything to fear from a straightforward swoop on a High Street store of the sort meek shopaholic Felicity initially enjoys?

The answer, it quickly becomes clear, is the Saturday-jobbing Eastern European shop assistant who refuses to immediately refund her ill-chosen pair of biker boots.

Our vaudeville heroine's pleas fall on predictably deaf ears but her limp-wristed blatherings are about to be consigned to the dustbin for the rest of eternity.

Inspired by partner-in-crime Doris' ruthless pounding of a yob foolish enough to pick her bicycle to mess with, the pair urge us to close our eyes and join them in the elevator to hell, from where their only chance of escape is persuading a soulless, slack-jawed trucker called Armageddon to unleash his inner fire.

As the Furies dispose of his mate via a grisly removal of his vital organs (that's the grotesque bit), the pair take their victim's mind on a twisted road trip which could best be described as My Name Is Earl in reverse.

McDonalds staff who refuse to serve Happy Meals to over-12s find themselves casually firebombed and an Antarctic seal - in whose belly audience members were invited to write their greatest irritations before the show - is murdered. The librarian unable to locate an English copy of Milton's Paradise Lost (upon which the script is very loosely based) miraculously finds one after Armageddon raises his voice for the first time in his life.

Emotional outbursts may be healthier than the classic British trait of conflict avoidance at all costs but the tragedy this quest ended in was a lingering predictability.

For a play which debated the liberation anger can bring, it felt odd that Ottillie Parfitt and Polly Wiseman reined in their act at the expense of either genuine comedy or darker theatrics.

Their impressive versatility would have justified a more passionate exploration of the concept but, diluted by slapstick cabaret, Fierce remained an undemanding treat.