With Goethe, Schiller and Brecht as its guiding lights, not to mention the way it has taken writers such as Sarah Kane to heart (she's more popular there than in Britain), German theatre has a reputation for the heavyweight and highbrow. But the country that posed Faust's ethical dilemma and created the Verfremdungseffekt seems to be tentatively exploring panto – albeit in a very particular way.

It all begins with the curious fact that (as you may know) every New Year for nearly 40 years, Germans have been laughing hysterically at a black-and-white TV version of an end-of-the-pier-music-hall skit entitled Dinner for One. It's performed in English by sometime music-hall star Freddie Frinton. (Although barely anyone in Britain seems to remember Frinton, were he alive today he'd enjoy huge celebrity status in Germany.)

Here's the gag, if you can call it that: Freddie plays a slightly doddery butler called James, who is responsible for serving his employer, Miss Sophie, on the occasion of her 90th birthday. The table is set with four empty places; when Miss Sophie asks about the seating plan, James tells her that it's as previously planned. He then asks: "Same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?", to which she replies: "Same procedure as every year, James," before insisting that he not only serves dinner to an empty table, but drinks for everyone too. Inevitably enough, James overfills the glasses, falls over the tigerskin rug and the two end up – with more than a hint of saucy innuendo – grappling about how best Miss Sophie should be escorted to bed.

When the German TV personality Peter Frankenfeld saw the skit on stage in Blackpool in 1962, he brought Frinton and his co-performer May Warden to Germany to film it, airing the results on his TV show. The show has since passed from cult hit to entrenched tradition, and is broadcast back-to-back on all channels over the new year. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is the most frequently repeated TV show ever – although it has yet to air in Britain. If you're curious, watch the YouTube clip. When you've done that, you can get a sense of its popularity via a rendition in animated Lego. Say "Same procedure as last year?" to anyone in Germany and you'll get the quickfire answer: "Same procedure as every year, James," and a laugh too.

So, when Financial Times theatre critic Ian Shuttleworth pointed me to a live stage version in Berlin, I immediately thought it was worth shelling out a few euros in the name of investigative journalism. Brotfabrik, a small studio theatre in former east Berlin, was packed, even though this was the second of several showings over the course of the evening. Streamers and party poppers were handed out, bowls of crisps were passed along the rows. And then the show began, but not in the familiar way. Instead, the setting had three students moving into a house on New Year's Eve. As they sat down to watch Dinner for One on TV, it blew a fuse, so they decided to act out the sketch for themselves – to the obvious delight of the audience. The cast, perhaps a little ill-advisedly, threw in a few songs: Oasis's Wonderwall and Survivor's Eye of the Tiger (a poor pun relating to the stuffed rug) made an appearance.

While the impeccable comic timing and music-hall polish of Frinton were undeniably missing, this group seem to have produced a form of what I can only call panto – playing with in-jokes, experimenting with audience participation, and wrapping the whole lot in Christmassy glitz. "Did you enjoy it?" I asked an elderly chap as he left the building. "Yes," he laughed. Why? "History. The same procedure as every year."

This Dinner for One seems only a small step away from a cross-dressing Miss Sophie dame and stack of double entendres, boo-hisses and behind-yous. Perhaps next year.

For the moment, though, it's business as usual for Berlin theatre in 2010. A version of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz performed by ex-convicts at the Schaubühne, anyone?