Just like the film, the musical version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at The Savoy had me in helpless fits of laughter. It’s one of the best shows in town.

So why has it taken so long for this superbly entertaining production to be brought to the West End after premiering in Broadway nine years ago?
 

Robert Lindsay, still warmly remembered for his starring role in Me And My Girl, is deliciously smooth as the suave, sophisticated, ultimate conman Lawrence Jameson.
 

Lindsay and Rufus Hound, as oikish gate-crashing rival Freddy Benson, play off each other superbly. 

Hound succeeds in giving irritating chancer Fredddy some redeeming, endearing features and he compensates for his limitations as a singer by throwing himself into every number with great gusto.
 

Turning the classic 1988 film comedy, which starred Michael Cane and Steve Martin, into a musical has many plusses - and the odd minus.
 

Many of David Yazbek’s lyrics are frivolously witty, but inserting so many numbers means cutting out one of the film’s funniest scenes.

Freddy, posing as Lawrence’s disgusting, half-witted brother Ruprecht in order to scare off a woman seeking marriage, asked in the film if he could be excused from the dinner table - and then urinated while remaining in his seat.

But Jeffrey Lane’s book still contains several laugh-out-loud moments.

The funniest – and longest - is when Hound, pretending to be paralysed from the waist down to gain sympathy from a new ‘mark’, is confronted by Lawrence, masquerading as a shrink, armed with a feather and a cane.

The two rival gigolos have bet each other that they will be the first to fleece €50,000 from an American ‘soap queen’, with the loser leaving the millionaire playground on the French Riviera where they are operating their scams.
 

Their intended victim, Christine Colgate, was endearingly and desirably played in the performance I saw by Alice Fearn as Katherine Kingsley was indisposed.
 

Samantha Bond and John Marquez, involved in a touching romance not featured in the movie, add credibility to an enjoyable romp that occasionally descends into self-mockery.
 

Director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell is not adverse to his talented cast sometimes over-playing their parts to get the laughs, while Peter McKintosh’s dazzling costumes are filled by the most glamorous ensemble I can remember seeing in a musical.