THE cheeky poster, a rococo pastiche of Athena's flashing tennis girl, has been flying off the walls, begged, borrowed, even stolen.

Told By An Idiot's saucily subversive co-production with the West Yorkshire Playhouse is unlikely to attract such a fevered response, however. In tennis terms, it sets up points, only to become bogged down in repetitive rallies and then fails to put away winners.

Lead actress Hayley Carmichael and director Paul Hunter, co-founders of Told By An Idiot, conceived their Casanova makeover as an adult fairytale and then invited poet and playwright Carol Ann Duffy to apply an alternative, modern female spin to familiar male constructs, just as she did for The Kray Sisters and Queen Kong in her book The World's Wife.

You could call this typically physical Idiot show Casanouvelle, the novelty being that Casanova has gone to the distaff side, still an 18th century seducer, but now a woman of wiles rather than a randy Italian stallion.

Put plainly - and plain is not a word that applies to Duffy's luxuriant turn-of-phrase - the soul-baring Carmichael's Casanova still has a sexual appetite to satiate and the demeanour of a rapacious rogue, but now has all the risks of womanhood: pregnancy, physical abuse and declining beauty.

Yet while there is romping fun - especially for a monk taken in every position by a flexibly friendly Casanaova - on Naomi Wilkinson's black polished floor and climbing-frame stage, there is no swelling drama or insightful reasoning behind Casanova's anarchic change of sex.

Likewise, the dining table suspended in mid-air and a seagull surveying all from its perch on high, may strive for surrealist comedy bonus points, but they seem forced, like too much of the humour in this episodic entertainment.

It is impossible not to think of Emma Rice's gloriously unpredictable, exuberantly wild yet moving reinventions of classic texts for Kneehigh when confronted by a lesser variation on the same theme. Kneehigh shed new light, add new depth; Told By An Idiot only play games and amuse every so often (as when Casanova is told, upon her accidental arrival in Leeds, that we northerners don't like "Cockney b***ards").

Ironically, for a production with a cast and dialogue as international and multilingual as Casanova's epic travels across Europe, this female Casanova loses more than it gains in translation.


Casanova, Told By An Idiot, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until September 29. Box office: 0113 213 7700.