It’s the time of year where family shows and tall tales come to the fore. While pantomimes are great fun, The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre has set sail on a different tack this Christmas without a dame or beanstalk in sight but a show that is no less fun for it.

Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as told by himself) is a fascinating story, compellingly told and ingeniously staged.

Penned by Pulitzer Prize winning dramatist Donald Margulies, the show – which gets its UK premiere at The Jack – is based on the real life story of Louis de Rougemont.

It tells the tale of a sickly child in London who is read adventure stories by his single-parent mother who leaves home in search of amazing experiences of his own and, boy, does he have them: robbed of his mother’s savings, he heads out aboard a pearling ship, encounters a giant octopus, makes friends with dog, is shipwrecked and lives for 30 years with aborigines in the southern hemisphere.

His story is a bestseller, only it may not be all it seems.

Margulies’ play is two thirds Victorian Boy’s Own adventure gloriously brought to life with plenty of imagination and fun by director Kate Bannister.

Just as you begin to wonder if there’s any emotional heft to the tale, there it comes by the barrowful, mixed in with a neat little parallel to today’s celebrity culture and those that cling on to fame – if not fortune – at all costs.

It all builds to a weighty crescendo.

Clearly, such as story needs a central performance to ‘sell it’ and Tony Taylor as Louis has bags of charisma and the innocent enthusiasm necessary for the wide-eyed teller of an  extraordinary life, or maybe the desperately disclosed fabrication of a man obsessed with adventure stories.

It’s just a shame that he struggled with some of his lines, leaving some jarring moments as he stumbled over or reached for a word. Or maybe it was an indication that he was an unreliable narrator? I’ve a feeling it was the former.

The small yet excellent cast was completed by Rochelle Rose, who was lively and perpetually engaging, and Robert Durbin, who was absorbing and made the most of the comic opportunities presented in the story.

Shipwrecked was produced by the same team who made last year’s The Mystery of Irma Vep and, looking at this, it is no surprise that was nominated for hatfuls of awards.

It zips along and is cleverly set up with a basic but authentic Victorian-looking, highly adaptable set, and the best use of sound that I have seen in a show for a long, long time.

How we rated Shipwrecked: ****