‘Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?” The question posed by the Chorus in Henry V might be framed, with other locations, to cover the challenges faced by Patrick Barlow throughout his theatrical career.

As one half of the National Theatre of Brent, three and more decades ago, he was writer of, and star in, plays that recreated, with a two-strong cast, the Black Hole of Calcutta, the Zulu Wars and the Charge of the Light Brigade (half an inch onward?).

His comic achievement in these has always struck me as infinitely superior to that of his many imitators since. It is good to find, then, that he has not lost his touch in his latest epic task, an adaptation of General Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur, undertaken in partnership (as co-writer and co-director) with Sean Foley, a man no less practised (The Play Wot I Wrote, for instance) in the creation of laughter.

Their hilarious production is a far cry from the 2009’s Ben Hur Live, presented at the O2 Arena with 46 horses, a cast of 400 and 500 tons of special sand. At the tiny Watermill, the horses are in the mind (and in the neighs and whinnies of Ben and Max Ringham’s splendid soundtrack), the cast is reduced by a factor of a hundred and there is no sand at all. Its place is taken by as much corn, scriptwise, as might be found in a Carry On movie, a much-loved genre also recalled in Nick Haverson’s Kenneth Williams-style study of a fruity Roman emperor.

Memories of another great comedian, Eric Morecambe, cannot fail to be stirred, both visually (see above) and aurally, by the performance of Andy Williams in a variety of unlikely roles, including that of Ben Hur’s lavishly bewigged mother (‘Mrs Hur’, of course). Portrayal of the hero Ben, meanwhile, demands the full-time attention of John Hopkins. Well-muscled, imposing of voice, he calls to mind (as of course he is meant to) the Charlton Heston of the 1959 film version, the majestic sweep of which survives here mainly in the dramatic music.

Leaving best till last, Elizabeth Cadwallader is truly wonderful as a succession of female characters, the funniest of them two vamps with super-sultry voices and bodies much given to balletic movement and startling embraces.

Until July 28. Box office: 01635 46044 (www.watermill.org.uk).