The National Theatre’s gleeful celebration of vulgarity, One Man, Two Governors, was seen in Aylesbury in 2011 prior to its triumphs in the West End and on Broadway. Put off by the self-consciously ‘starry’ turn from James Corden and a running-time half an hour too long, this reviewer was only sniffily appreciative.

At the same venue this week, the production returned shorn of those 30 minutes and sans Corden. Your critic is sniffy no more!

The play now seems even funnier than Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters (from which it’s adapted) as memorably delivered in 1982 at Oxford Playhouse by the Cambridge Theatre Company.

The new cast is not long into a gruelling tour that lasts well into the New Year, with a not-to-be-missed visit to Oxford in February. Their cheery enthusiasm for the task is clear throughout.

Writer Richard Bean has relocated the action to the Brighton of 1963, complete with period beat combo. Well supplied with crudery, the play is the stage equivalent of a smutty Donald McGill postcard.

The focus is on roly-poly Francis Henshall, beloved of buxom Dolly (Emma Barton), whom Gavin Spokes portrays with the comic timing of an Eric Morecambe or Oliver Hardy.

He becomes factotem simultaneously to Patrick Warner’s preposterously public-school Stanley Stubbers and Alicia Davies’s cross-dressing tough nut Rachel Crabbe.

Nothing is more side-splitting than the dinner he serves to both at once with the assistance of a geriatric waiter (Michael Dylan). This is slapstick genius.

Verbal fun owes much to the work of Jasmine Banks as dumb-blonde Pauline and Edward Hancock as her drippily thespian fiancé.

One Man, Two Guvnors
Aylesbury Waterside
Until Saturday
Box office: Call 0844 871 7607 or visit atgtickets.com/aylesbury
Also at New Theatre, Oxford, Feb 23-28
Box office: Call 0844 871 3020 or visit atgtickets.com/oxford