Potential audiences for Dictionary might find this title misleading – but then words can be, and that’s just what tonight is all about. When I ask the guy behind me at BATS Studio why he’s here, he says he’s fascinated by the nooks and crannies of the English language. Nooks and crannies are all very well, though what we’re about to witness is more like a labyrinthine journey with lots of potholes!

Onstage are two blokes, William Thompson and Cullan Rolton, seated side by side, casually dressed and studiously engrossed in a couple of red bound books that look suspiciously like dictionaries. They are crossing and uncrossing their legs in tandem to ‘It Had To Be You’, the significance of which will be revealed.

Pre (Rolton) is a supporter of linguistic prescriptivism while Dee (Thompson) is a proponent of descriptivism. But don’t let the terminology put you off! It’s the excuse for an hour of semantic squabble that could only be created by those so grounded in language that they are able to make merciless mayhem with it.

So many of the words we use on a daily basis are up for grabs. You wouldn’t think ‘sandwich’ had so many variations. Or that ‘what?’ could be so open to misinterpretation. The dialogue is combative: Pre versus Dee has our performers at each other’s throats – that’s figurative – in a struggle for linguistic supremacy.

We wonder how it will all end as the fight does get physical! But never fear: Pre and Dee are endlessly inventive. The action takes an unexpected turn, and we get an onstage display of what’s at stake that speaks volumes (those who’ve seen the show will get the pun). Still intent on one upmanship, Dee gets defiant (deefiant?) with unexpected consequences.

We’re so engrossed we forget to be startled when, in the final moments of what has been already an extraordinary display of verbal wit, things take a philosophical, and even moving, turn with a thoughtful discussion on one of the language’s possibly most misused words. 

Writer, director and sound operator Nathan King has a right (oops! Is that the ‘right’ word?) alongside his two players to be proud of this creation. Dictionary is more than a linguistic delicatessen – it’s a feast of fabulousness. And in one word – brilliant.

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