“Always keep your bowler on in times of stress. And watch out for diabolical masterminds.”

— “Talented amateur” British TV super-spy Mrs. Emma Peel, to her debonair and refined partner in espionage, John Steed, 1967.

Sound advice. Before John Steed, of course, Charle Chaplin’s most famous character, The Tramp, wore a bowler, and Rene Magritte appropriated the bowler-as-surrealist-emblem around the same time Steed was partnered up with the future Pussy Galore.

You can add to that august roster of bowlerites Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, the ingenious physical and conceptual comedians who perform together as rainpan 43. The Studio Theatre is presenting three of their whimsical slapstick shows this month, including the work-in-progress Amnesia Curiosa and the new machines machines machines machines machines machines machines. But first in the lineup is their road-tested and mercilessly gut-busting all wear bowlers, a delightful 80-minute flight of self-referential fancy wherein these two impish hobos find themselves, to their horror, trapped onstage with your voyeuristic ass staring at them, ravenous with expectation. Their increasingly desperate attempts to evade your cruel gaze comprise pretty much the rest of the show.

We meet this pair via an old-timey black-and-white silent film, wandering the dusty plain. It’s not giving away too much to say they quickly find themselves spat out from the celluloid confines of the movie and into the real world. This happens every so often in movies, from Woody Allen’s pretty good The Purple Rose of Cairo to John McTiernan’s famously bad Last Action Hero. So it’s pretty much Charlie Chapin meets Bill Irwin meets Woody Allen meets Laurel and Hardy meets Rene Magritte meets Arnold Schwarzenegger. Could that possibly be bad? Well, never mind that; it isn’t. In fact, it’s great!

Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle photo by Greg Costanzo; courtesy Studio Theatre