Holding court

An explosion of bawdily provocative 17th century humour has hit London's West End in this delightful satire, which oozes with entertaining portrayals of the rogues, wideboys and social climbers of James I's controversial early reign.

A worthless knight whose vanity would put a peacock to shame, a limping hunchbacked money-lender, a lusty young wench with burning desires to become a "ly-dee" and a small, stuffed dog are just some of the treats on offer in Lucy Pitman-Wallace's comically inventive production.

This is one of the triumphs of this challenging RSC season of late-Elizabethan, Jacobean and Carolinian plays, which has transferred from Stratford-on-Avon.

Its energy spills effortlessly from the proscenium arch of the Gielgud, despite a manically complex plot and in-references to the politics of the time, which were inflammatory enough to land two of its three authors - George Chapman and Ben Jonson - in prison: the third, John Marston, escaped.

It may seem surprising that they were imprisoned for satirising Scots, yet in 1605 James I was dubbing himself emperor while energetically promoting the union of Scotland and England. Given that his court had a reputation for rampant excess and instant knighthoods, James was doubtlessly also enraged by the character Sir Petronel Flash (gloriously embodied in preening pink and gold by Michael Matus), whose greedy quest for money leads him to marry a foolish London goldsmith's daughter at an over-indulgent wedding feast, where more kinds of meat are consumed than existed "in Noah's ark".

The self-consciously symmetrical storyline starts with this marriage. The goldsmith Touchstone wishes to find suitors for his two daughters, but while one - Gertrude - is wildly extravagant and wanton, the other is piously prudent and comically content to marry her father's lowly apprentice

at a wedding based on the leftovers from her sister's own debauched affair.

Complications set in as the plot spirals into a frenzy of swindling, wife-stealing and fruitless journeys, including a voyage to Virginia that is bathetically wrecked on the Isle of Dogs.

Robert Jones's design ensnares the imagination from the start, as two courtly gentlemen parade smoothly across the back of a blue-lit stage with exquisitely modelled ships balanced on their heads. As such poetry degenerates giddily into lowlife comedy, Amanda Drew

(Gertrude) proves a highlight with wonderfully over-the-top, mashed vowels and lusty asides in an energetic cast with not one dud. This is fascinatingly satirical and as colourful as any pantomime. A true festive treat.

In rep until 27 January. Box office: 0870 890 1105.

Eastward Ho!