Welcome to a medieval world where comets are portentous, dragons are fiery, and taxes are punitive. Tough times for the average peasant, but two lucky souls have uncommon access to power: the town crier, who mediates between monarch and serf, and the jester, employed to tell the court uncomfortable truths. If anyone can quell a peasants' revolt, it's these two.

Playwright Nay Dhanak is fascinated by this power imbalance, which they suggest mirrors today's mismatch between tech overlords and everyone else. Their professional debut, Cry/Laugh, speculates about what happens when these privileged outsiders lose their jobs. Can no news really be good news?

On one side, a bloviating James Peake plays a town crier disheartened by his endless stream of bad news. He may think he's important, but the king sacks him without a second thought. On the other, a light-footed Morven Blackadder plays a jester redeployed on an impossible quest to find a second sun to outshine an eclipse. She remains cheerful, but the king's ear is no longer hers.

This lunchtime production for A Play, a Pie and a Pint, directed by Ben Standish and the Guardian's Brian Logan, has its actors working hard - often too hard - to extract clownish joviality from a fairytale quest for new roles.

Dhanak has something to say about power and accountability, but whatever it is gets squeezed out by the writer's greater interest in narrative structure and self-referential commentary on joke mechanics. Despite the actors' efforts, Cry/Laugh is neither funny enough to carry its meandering story and absurdist twists, nor focused enough to articulate its political intent.