Scaramouche Jones: Oxford Playhouse THE programme photograph shows a dapper Nol Coward-like figure in Panama and safari suit. We know better. We know Pete Postlethwaite, above, as a craggy-jawed, doleful chap who's been kicked around by life and looks at it warily, a man ideally suited to evoke the extraordinary existence of the clown Scaramouche Jones.

He's first seen in silhouette performing a strange mime whose meaning becomes clear only later. He enters in typical costume -- red nose, white face, tattered dress-suit, big slippers. It is Millennium Eve and he was born on the eve of the previous century, 1899. This is not the least likely tale we have to accept as he tells his life story.

Justin Butcher's play is subtitled The Seven White Masks and we learn what each represent. First is the unusually white skin of the boy born to a Trinidad whore. He is sold to an Arab slaver (the white Atlantic salt is the second mask), then an Italian snake charmer (the Sahara sand is the third) who teaches him Latin.

In Venice he plunges into icy water to escape the attentions of Prince Udine and becomes a powdered love-lorn Pierrot -- the fifth mask. Captured by the Nazis, he becomes a grave-digger -- the quicklime that covers the corpses is the sixth mask. The white paint of the silent clown is the sixth.

Discreet sound, lighting and direction and Postlethwaite's crumpled expressive face gives the fantastic tale remarkable conviction. The production is on at the Playhouse all week.