STAGE REVIEW: Tartuffe - at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, February 23, 2019.

IT was some years ago that the phrase - ‘and now for something completely different’ - came into the nation’s psyche.

This was due to the writers in the Monty Python team who provided many anarchic and madcap moments for the Monty Python’s Flying Circus television series.

Well here is something now that is truly and completely different! And how wonderful it is for that…

It’s irreverent, it appears, to almost everything taking potshots as it does at Brum, and not just Birmingham but Pakistan too, also the Muslim religion and the Koran with tongues stuck so firmly in cheeks it might need a small operation for them to be removed!

Moliere’s original comedy from the late 1600s is one of his great satires and certainly controversial in its day when it attacked Catholicism.

At the time it was felt his words targeted a secret society of interfering do-gooders when people sought advice from spiritual advisers or gurus of whom some could be regarded as fakes and charlatans.

Indeed, the original title was Tartuffe or the Impostor.

Writers Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto have totally updated the original and their version definitely ups the anti when it comes to the comedy aspect which is poured on with considerably amusing irreverence along with the shift in religion.

The pair have combined before with television hits such as The Office, The Kumars at No 42 and Goodness Gracious Me.

Here the story unfolds with the pulsating music of the legendary Midlands supergroup Black Sabbath blasting us out of our seats as we are invited to enter the Pervaiz household in modern Birmingham with a wam welcome from Darina, the house cleaner.

The Pervaiz are a well-off family of British-Asians, with Pakistani origins, and they have their Darina, from Bosnia, brilliantly played by Michelle Bonnard, who - for good measure - is also a Muslim.

Cohesiveness in the family is then threatened by another ’member’ of the household… the charismatic and devout Tahir Taufiq Arsue, the one and only Tartuffe - the religious hypocrite.

An outstanding performance here from the impressive and irrepressible Asif Khan, as was Simon Nagra’s gullible Imran Pervaiz, who wants his family to let their souls follow the ways of spirituality. He’s even prepared to give up his Norwegian spruce decking!

This is the cue for bedlam and the majority of the excellent comedy with lines such as ‘you’re not from Pakistan, you were born in Small Heath.’’

The problem, on advice from our two-faced fresh ‘arrival’, is Imran being persuaded he and the family need to live as ‘real Muslims’. He also reveals plans to marry his daughter, who is studying the plight of women in sub-Saharan Africa, to Tartuffe and he also decides to sign over his property and business this religious con-man.

Sasha Behar is clearly in her comfort zone as Imran’s second wife, Amira, and easily captures the comedy aspect of the seduction scene with Tartuffe, clad in his leopard print underpants, to perfection.

James Clyde's Khalil, a family friend, is delightfully amusing too in his attempts to find a solution to his mate's woes.

But go in any direction and there is no weak link in an excellent cast where everything is neatly knitted together by the hilarious Darina, who is elevated here to a key pivotal role, and doesn’t she have the exceptional final word too!

It’s not quite Python-esque - which didn’t always deliver, but director Iqbal Khan ensures this hits the mark with considerable accuracy and regularity due to its provocativeness and topicality.

Different it surely is but in effect also true-ish to the original, and it’s certainly hugely entertaining.

Making it modern and more appealing to today’s masses, and linking it to its big neighbour up the road, might be the first of many and it could possibly persuade more to travel down from Brum on the A3400 - just the A34 in years gone by - to enjoy the delights of the RSC.

Tartuffe’s duration is a mere two hours and 10 minutes, plus a 20 minute interval.

What a pity we couldn’t have had more!