The star of this comedy is Charles II breaking the fourth wall to engage in delightful riffs with members of the audience. The play is set at the time of the Anglo-Dutch wars and the audience is encouraged to show derision for the Dutch. An unsuspecting couple caught in a box are grilled for our amusement or were they plants? Al Murray’s role is more akin to his stand up routine than Restoration Comedy but what does it matter if it makes us laugh and we did laugh. Mel Giedroyc too gets her turn with the audience with some cheeky French innuendo.

The sets and costumes by Michael Taylor are fringed festooned hangings and sumptuous brocades for the royal court, although I think I detected a William Morris print on the King’s dressing gown, but not in Arts and Crafts homespun but in silk! The King’s mini-skirted night gown exposed his bare knees and legs but his gold wing tongued boots, worn in bed of course, had red heels à la Christian Louboutin.

Of course I recognised as the backdrop to the palace scenes a painting from Sir James Thornhill’s Greenwich Painted Hall but with Charles II painted in. The set too which sees the conspirators in prison is impressive as all three get tangled in and by their leg and arm chains. The greenery of County Kildare is a brilliant and pretty bucolic setting.

I liked too the boots on the conspirators which could have reached up to cover their thighs but with enormous turnovers down to their ankles which looked quite comic and ungainly. The courtiers in black and white have these splendid Carolinian wigs and charmingly help change the scenes while preening, posing and smiling. What a handsome era the 1670s were! There is a clever chase on a 3D map of the Tower, with miniature figures slotting into the pathways as they are pursued.

Neil Morrissey comes into his own as a courtier and manages to make Al Murray corpse! I think the cast might have been having as much fun as I did.