“Skios” sees Michael Frayn on good – if not spectacular – comic form, in a tale of mistaken identities, lost suitcases and naked ladies. Dr Norman Wilfred is an egghead engaged to give a talk at the Fred Toppler Institute, a high-profile conference centre situated on the Greek island of Skios. He’s been selected for the task by Nikki, ambitious thirtysomething PA to the Institute’s benefactor, with designs on the departing Director’s job. Nikki has arranged to meet Dr Wilfred at the airport, and dutifully awaits his arrival carrying a placard bearing his name. Unfortunately for her, and for Dr Wilfred, their plans are derailed right from the start by the most unexpected of circumstances: the arrival, at the same airport, of one Oliver Fox, a UK celebrity notorious for outrageous spontaneity. He’s quick-witted, boyishly handsome (forever brushing his blond fringe from his eyes) and utterly charming. He’s also totally irresponsible and liable to act completely on impulse – as, inevitably, he does here. Spying Nikki with her placard, and taking an instant shine to her, he wonders to himself what might happen if he were suddenly to “become” Dr Norman Wilfred… And so he does.

Frayn makes some interesting points here about how identity may be determined by societal consensus: we expect someone to be who they claim to be, and so reinforce that identity with our own subsequent behaviours. This is precisely what happens with Oliver Fox – he never actually says he’s Dr Wilfred, but allows everyone around him to assume it to be so. And then, to his surprise and delight, he finds it is so. Everyone takes him to be Dr Wilfred, even when it must be clear that he can’t possibly be that eminent physicist, with so many achievements to his name; he’s not nearly old enough, for one thing. But his charm sees Oliver through every obstacle, every potential for unmasking, even when asked by an admiring throng to explain just how it was that he derived that certain solution to that certain equation… Oliver improvises brilliantly, and wins over his audience so completely that they find themselves helpless to resist. By the end of the book, Oliver’s Dr Wilfred becomes more real than the real Dr Wilfred, a comic paradox Frayn challenges us to refute.

A farce requires complications, and Frayn assembles them with relish. Oliver has originally gone to Skios to hook up with a new girlfriend, scatter-brained Georgie, who at the last minute phones to tell him she missed her flight; keen to avoid the boredom of a solitary holiday in Skios, Oliver grasps at the nearest remedy to hand, namely Nikki and her placard for Dr Wilfred. But Georgie has managed to catch another flight, and arrives herself in Skios after Oliver has already left for the Institute with Nikki. She gets into the taxi Oliver had originally booked for himself, to take him to the holiday villa belonging to an ex-girlfriend’s well-heeled friends. Also arriving at the airport, of course, is the real Dr Norman Wilfred, who (through a farcical misunderstanding) finds himself mistaken for Oliver Fox and also winds up heading towards the same holiday villa. What might happen, do we think, when Georgie slips naked into bed with “Oliver”, only to find…

What follows is well-choreographed silliness, involving naked sunbathing, mislaid suitcases, money-laundering Greek entrepreneurs, a brace of near-identical Greek cab-drivers and vengeful ex-girlfriends baying for Oliver’s blood. This is good stuff, unashamedly broad but undeniably clever in construction and execution. It plays like a good early-70s sex farce, not unlike Billy Wilder’s Avanti! in overall style, though lacking that film’s emotional heart. Frayn makes some interesting points about identity, and even about the mathematical expectations of comic farce – the finale posits one absurdist conclusion, a likely extrapolation from unlikely circumstances, before selecting an ending more bizarre still. It closes with a nicely-judged visual image, of the goddess Athena symbolically returning to reclaim her island, and most of its loose ends satisfactorily resolved. The dialogue is good, the characters fun, and the situation inventive; anyone in the mood for a rollicking farce should look no further.