London Assurance

Dion Boucicault's 1841 comedy is a wildly jolly romp that speaks, though never very seriously, to our own image-obsessed age. Its characters, caught up in an accelerating farcical whirl of misapprehensions, deceptions and embarrassments, are preoccupied with appearances, and financial ruin knocks at the door of the smartest Belgravia domiciles. Pretty country squire's niece Grace Harkaway is condemned to wed vain, ageing London booby Sir Harcourt Courtly, thanks to a bargain struck by her dead father, to whom Sir Harcourt owed vast sums of money. Sir Harcourt's son Charles shares dad's spendthrift ways, and is being pursued by angry creditors. Both, along with Richard Dazzle, a resourceful hanger-on Charles acquired on a drunken jaunt, pitch up at Squire Harkaway's rustic pile. Mistaken identities and romantic confusions ensue, and Sir Harcourt encounters a woman who brings a fresh flush to his rouged cheek: Lady Gay Spanker, horse-mad and married to the ineffectual Adolphus, more aptly nicknamed Dolly.

The performances are the great pleasure of Nicholas Hytner's production, in which he choreographs all the delicious silliness with exemplary skill. Simon Russell Beale is an irresistible roly-poly Sir Harcourt, posing, preening, twinkling and striking many a divertingly ridiculous attitude. His self-regard and effeminacy are beautifully matched by Fiona Shaw's hearty Lady Gay, whose affection for Richard Briers's Dolly is of the sexless sort she might lavish on her favourite foxhound. Briers, tortoise-necked and often visibly and audibly vibrating with consternation, is a delight too, as are Nick Sampson's supercilious valet Cool and Matt Cross's impish Dazzle. And there's plenty of sparky sparring between Michelle Terry's quick-witted Grace and Paul Ready's smitten, floundering Charles. There are even oversized mechanical rats racing about the Harkaway ancestral home to add to the mayhem. Frenetically good fun.