To paraphrase the words of Chumbawamba, he gets knocked down, then he gets back up again, they’re never going to keep him down.

This is the story of perennial shipwreck survivor Sinbad the sailor, whose life is told at the Tobacco Factory Theatre in half a dozen vignettes, the five actors on stage playing everything from fishermen to anthropologists.

Dressed in pyjama bottoms and a tweed jacket, Vic Llewellyn’s Sinbad is both menacing and tragic.

As director Craig Edwards says: “Sinbad is either the luckiest man in the world because he always survives being shipwrecked, or the unluckiest man in the world because he is always being shipwrecked.”

Edwards, seen on stage as the step mother in Cinderella at the Tobacco Factory in 2011, has kept the proceedings very simple, with just a change of hat moving the action from a palace to a boat.

This simplicity is not something that hasn’t happened at the Tobacco Factory before though, and Sinbad the Sailor is sometimes too simplistic for its own good.

There is only so much that imaginations can do, and it was noticeable that some younger children got fidgety especially as the pace dipped in the second half.

Two scenes stood out for me, when Llewellyn donned buckets on his shoes to become a sailor-eating giant; and a fun wedding dance routine employing on-stage musicians Pete Judge and Alex Vann, both of Three Cane Whale, to full effect.

Zara Ramm’s hot air balloon pilot was an enjoyable enigma, Saikat Ahamed was in his element as mother of the bride, while Chris Bianchi and Lucy Tuck were reunited as a double-act after their appearance together this summer in The Boy Who Cried Wolf at Bristol Old Vic.

The Last Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor is at the Tobacco Factory Theatre until January 12. For more information, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/the_last_voyage_of_sinbad_the_sailor/.