LONDON—On Sunday night, the traditional seating arrangement in London’s Old Vic theater was done away with in favor of an in-the-round arrangement, but no actors mounted the venerable stage. Instead, as the lights dimmed and the curtain rose, the audience saw what appeared to be Ulrich Rückriem’s raw, solid, upright sculpture Untitled (Granite) (1984) — except that this version moved, swore, and generally grumbled a lot.

Untitled (Granite) was soon joined on stage by remote-controlled, chatty, fiberglass versions of Barbara Hepworth’s Elegy III (1966), Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man (1947), Sol LeWitt’s Four Cubes (1971), and Jeff Koons’s Rabbit (1986). The Hepworth was presented as an upper-class, chain-smoking English lady; the Giacometti as a suave, philosophical Frenchman; the Lewitt as an insightful, though overly theoretical, American; and the Koons as a campy, brash, disco-loving New Yorker. Later, a silent version of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box (1964) joined the group. Spotlit in the balcony above were the actors behind the artworks’ voices: Alex Jennings, Lesley Manville, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, and Kevin Spacey (who is also the theater’s artistic director), respectively. The Brillo Box, it turned out, was just a Brillo Box.

Welcome to Drama Queens, by Scandinavian art duo Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset. Sunday's 45-minute performance at the Old Vic was the work’s third outing, and the only one in the U.K. The event was intended to raise funds for the publicly funded theater.

The evening’s audience comprised the crème de la crème of the London art world — Institute of Contemporary Arts artistic director Ekow Eshun, Tate director Nicholas Serota, and artists Isaac Julien and Tracey Emin, to name a few — plus a bevy of £250 ($432) gala ticket holders. The crowd was good-natured and responded to the play’s puns and quips enthusiastically. Drama Queens displays Elmgreen & Dragset’s witty, campy style but owes much of its success to writer Tim Etchells, the artistic director of the Forced Entertainment theater group. Etchells introduced a technique often employed by his Sheffield-based troop: the repetition of character tics and lines that become not just catchphrases but verbal motifs, such as Elegy III’s smoker’s cough and incessant requests for cigarettes.

The play spent little time investigating the works themselves (though, frankly, what more needs to be said about these iconic pieces?), instead riffing on the role of the viewer and the market’s susceptibility to trends and seeming most interested in presenting a series of well-crafted jokes about the art world.

After the curtain went down, there was more drama at the after party at Victoria Miro Gallery, Elmgreen & Dragset’s U.K. representative, which is hosting an exhibition of the duo’s work through November 15. Critics Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, Tate curator Stuart Comer, British television personality Derren Brown, and Kevin Spacey were among the guests who enjoyed the cocktail-imbued mirth. There the fund-raising continued as Oliver Barker of Sotheby’s auctioned off an Elmgreen & Dragset “sister sculpture” to Elegy III; titled Single Form, Multiple Sighs, it included a built-in mp3 recording of lines from the play delivered by actress Joanna Lumley.

Perhaps signaling a coming market slowdown, the work failed to reach its £30,000 pre-auction estimate, selling for £25,000, with the whole sum going directly to the theater. But the shortfall was more than made up for when, to the surprise of everyone — including Barker, it would seem — Emin offered up four drawings she intended to produce, inspired by the performance. Invading the stage mid-sale with a plea for bids, Emin helped push the price of the drawings up to £10,000.