Anyone who saw Roger McGough’s 2009 adaptation of Moliere’s The Hypochondriac will remember what fun it was. Well, its predecessor, revived here by the English Touring Theatre, is even better.

While separated by several centuries, the Liverpudlian poet seems to have found something of a kindred spirit in the French satirist and demonstrates an intuitive understanding of his wit and themes.

In Moliere’s Church-baiting Tartuffe, about a conman operating under the veil of religion, McGough’s rhyming couplets propel the play along at a giggling, delirious pace.

As awful as they are artful, he is shameless in his tricks, mixing French and English language, period and present day; “interloper” is matched with “faux-pas”, Tartuffe with “strewth”. Our protagonist, we learn, is so pious he gave a bee a full burial. “Here lies a bee,” Cleante (Simon Coates) intones sardonically, “No longer busy. RIP.

Death, where is thy sting?”

It’s virtuoso wordplay and some of the cast struggle to keep up. Not so Joseph Alessi as buffoonish patriarch Orgon or Colin Tierney, who delights in his role as the lecherous, not-so-pious Tartuffe, gleefully throwing off his clerical robes to chase his buxom amore around the room, dressed only in a filthy loincloth.

The production works best when the actors turn the silliness up to the max – without the full-throttle approach it can appear frothy rather than furious.

As Valere, the young and prodigiously talented Hiran Abeysekera excels, illuminating every scene he appears in. The physical comedy of his interactions with Mariane (a Hugh Laurie-esque Emily Pithon), fluttering and tweeting like the idiotic lovebirds they are, make for some stand-out moments.

A total delight.