Nhamo, a dashing young goatherd, stumbles upon a mysterious narrator who has just hours to complete his masterpiece: the ultimate African TV drama. All that’s missing is a hero, and Nhamo fits the bill - if he can just defeat his arch nemesis, woo the girl of his dreams, appeal to audiences the world over, and learn his lines. By midnight.

The Epic Adventure of Nhamo the Manyika Warrior and His Sexy Wife Chipo, coming to the Palace Theatre next week, is a madcap farce that turns storytelling, cliches and Western stereotypes of Africa on their head - something that theatre company Tiata Fahodzi loves to do.

"The play wears its wit very lightly on its sleeve," says Lucian Msamati, the director and the company’s artistic director. "It doesn’t take itself too seriously but at the same time it does have quite a strong, serious message to it, which reveals itself in quite a satisfying way."

The play, the debut from actor Denton Chikura, featured in Tiata Fahodzi’s festival of new writing in 2011 and premiered at the Tricycle Theatre last summer, where it was a huge hit.

"It pokes fun at stereotypes," continues Lucian, 38, who, with his actor’s hat on, has appeared in numerous theatre productions himself as well as programmes such as The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Doctor Who, Luther and Game of Thrones.

"The narrator goes on and on about how he’s done lots of focus groups on things - the hero of the TV show has got to come from a repressed or a deprived background, and the villain won’t deign to perform a lesser role than an untrained goatherd who has never heard of Stanislavski, that sort of thing!

"It’s a good-natured, silly old laugh. Sometimes when things have long, mangled titles with foreign-sounding names people can recoil, I know, but the style and wit in this are universal and will appeal to everybody. Come one and come all!"