The premise - to parody or at least mention all of Shakespeare’s plays in one evening - is just the taking-off point, as only a few of the plays get extended comic treatment and much of the humour lies in side business, audience involvement and general farcical rushing about.

Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet are given extended parodies, Macbeth and Caesar somewhat shorter ones. Titus Andronicus becomes a TV cooking show and Othello a hip hop rap. The histories are rushed through in the form of an American football game (“…and the quarterback passes to the hunchback…”), while the comedies are combined into one all-purpose mistaken identity plot summary.

The sketches are genuinely witty and no doubt benefit from the audience’s relief at seeing these holy texts treated with such abandoned disrespect. The basic joke of the Romeo sketch involves the cast of three racing through the play, frantically doubling and redoubling roles. The Hamlet brings a couple of audience members onstage and involves the rest in portraying aspects of mad Ophelia’s psyche.

Throughout, ad-libs, corpsing and moments of panic - most of them no doubt carefully scripted and rehearsed - give the effect of spontaneity and shared fun.