With an audience already pumped up from watching an exciting Wimbledon third-round encounter between Heather Watson and Serena Williams on TV, the timing could hardly be better for Jamie Wood’s delightfully unhinged one-man show Beating McEnroe at Oxford’s Burton Taylor Theatre. Comedy is in the air from the outset as we are greeted on entrance by a bedraggled, chanting, yoga-esque Jamie, in lime-green raggedy wraps and childish lion headdress, gently lobbing tennis balls at the audience from his cross-legged centre-stage position on green and clay-coloured towels marked with white lines. A pin-up of Jamie’s hero Björn Borg and rival John McEnroe flank the backdrop on opposing sides.

Audience participation is de rigueur - from the invitation to join in with Jamie’s deep-throated chanting, to the good-humoured chiding of latecomers (who had the commendable excuse of waiting for the end of the Watson/Williams match). Who even knows whether the techie’s tardy appearance from under the curtain was intentional? Or perhaps he too is a tennis fan.

Jamie invites us into his childhood world where his six-year-old self and his family are infatuated by Björn Borg, winner of five Wimbledon Championships up to 1980. The shock and discomfort effected by McEnroe defeating Borg in 1981 is relayed alongside snapshots of Wood’s relationship with his older brother (his coach) and teenage-love rivalry with a school friend. While Wood divests himself of growing-up angst (and outer clothing), he randomly prances around in a scanty white tutu and Borg-style headband. The match, of course, must be re-enacted but not before the court is outlined in a mad-cap fashion (cue: audience member to help setup a novel method of painting white lines). Under Jamie’s ‘strict’ direction, audience members play an umpire, Borg and McEnroe, while one creates ball-on-racket sound effects with a plunger! Jamie dons a lime-green felt headpiece to become the ball – with hilarious effect.

Wood is a talented deviser actor who tunes into his audience and uses his clear vocals, admirable physical theatre skills, excellent timing, and totally off-the-wall sense of humour to good effect. His Beating McEnroe serves up some wrestling, hugging, a starring role for l’œuf (French tennis you know), and a generous portion of belly laughs. But that’s ‘an œuf’ from me as I must withhold the final reveal!