The Tartuffe

It's tough going beyond the Fringe, no matter how talented you are. So it's a tribute to the talent of young company Belt Up that their Edinburgh transfer (of riffs on Moliere's comedy 'Tartuffe' and Kafka's 'The Trial') is expansive enough to fill the cavernous underground vaults of Southwark Playhouse. In 'Tartuffe' the troupe occupies Moliere's drama like irreverent comic squatters, redecorating it beyond recognition with preposterous Franglais accents, pop-cultural pastiches and a skit-powered energy that helps you forgive the occasional shameless rag week cliché. The fourth wall is cheerily knocked to bits in the process, as is the plot: every situation soon becomes an excuse for multiplying gags, mimes and parodies. Sometimes they hit gold: the hysterical re-telling of the 'Lord of the Rings' story as bible story by a fake guru, with Gandhi in the roles of Gandalf and Nick Griffin as the Balrog (a pastiche within a riff within a play within an adaptation within a play) could only come out of this kind of manic patchworking. Belt Up are crude, lively, and some of the detail in their performances signals huge potential. But you can't run a show on pure energy: their schtick will be even better when they discover how to be still and to spin out a moment, a character, or an idea into sustained flight.