Once In A Lifetime - Young Vic

Saw this last night and have been trying to hone the correct metaphor for what Richard Jones is like as a director of comedy. I'm struggling but....
1. Imagine someone scooped out the inside of a watermelon, threw the nice red fruit to one side, and then served you the rind with some wiggly etchings on the outside.
2. Imagine someone bought you a puppy, tied a bow around its neck and then pulled out its spine and told you to enjoy it as it flopped lifelessly onto the floor.
3. Imagine you were visiting Japan and went to see some traditional kabuki theatre. However upon arriving you discover it has been directed by someone who has not only never seen kabuki theatre, they have never been to the theatre or even Japan, and you are therefore presented with a strange show in which all the conventions, style and context have been thrown away.
That is what going to see a Richard Jones play is like. And maybe it works for some plays, but it is death to comedy.
The first scene is pushed right to the front on a little sliver of stage and harshly lit, so huge looming shadows follow the actors around. The actors perform in a depressed, dazed way (at the end, my daughter and I wondered if there was some Marat/Sade meta-concept that we had missed - that these people were being forced to enact an old comedy as a form of therapy.) The first two scenes are both cramped and awkward, raising barely a laugh. There is no comic timing, no sense of joy, not even the slightest bit of reality that these might be vaudevillians. Some lines are muffled - sometimes by poor diction, sometimes, in the train scene, by the noisy contraption which makes the scenery look like it's passing by.
Things pick up slightly when they get to Hollywood and there is one pleasing plot point which even this production cannot wreck.
The staging is very 'clever' - lots of revolves, minimal furniture, a bit ironic. The actors seem uncomfortable on it - awkward with the doors, not knowing how to navigate around the false cameras, perching precariously on the rare chair.
There was sporadic laughter towards the end of the first act and a few laughs in the second (I think I laughed twice - once because something was funny, once in disbelief.)
My daughter gave it 1 star. I'm slightly more generous and would say 2 stars - one for the one laugh and one for an impressive set change.
They say theatre has a role in education and I have finally learnt my lesson - I will never go to another Richard Jones' comedy.