With its flouncy collars, melodramatic frippery and generous dollops of moral iniquity, Peter Lunga’s production of Molière’s Tartuffe is ridiculously funny. It’s also seriously attractive. In accordance with the prodigal indulgence of both its farcical genre and narrative substance, the aesthetic backdrop to Tartuffe’s satire of ludicrous hypocrisy is gratifyingly lavish. The production’s attention to detail, from the sumptuous interior of India Lewis’s decorous salon, to Talia Robertson’s ingenious make-up and Apurva Chitnis’s emotionally sensitive lighting, is very impressive, and complements some highly polished performances.

In the light of polish, then, gleaming with a theatrical sheen which his thoroughly greased locks seem keen to emulate, is Justin Wells’ eponymous Tartuffe. Bombastic grandiloquence, and a sanctimoniousness which is at once positively oleaginous, exude from the pores of his imposteur, who has entertaining difficulty containing the passions of his lascivious flesh within its priestly cladding.  Flamboyant, mercurial, aggrandised, and with it hilariously engaging, energetic and entertaining; adjectives of melodrama accrete around Wells’ Tartuffe like the endless profusion of mannered gestures that comprise the body language accompanying the vocal agility of his speech.

He’s not the only one to commit physically to the choregraphical grammar of farce: wild chases, stage-sprawling tantrums, closet-concealed eavesdropping and close encounters of a table-top kind ensure that Molière’s language is milked by the whole ensemble for all its burlesque comic potential. Particularly memorable are Saul Boyer’s arthritic yet agile Orgon, whose cane-waving and almost audible joint-creaking add preposterous panache to his patriarchy, and Charlotte Quinney’s scurryingly charismatic Dorine, who is as quick on her toes as her tongue to ensure she gets away with every ounce of her maidly mischief.

The stage dynamic the actors create is indefatigably buoyant and incredibly pacy. Dialogue bristles with every innuendo exploited and not a breath of comic potential is cut short. Somewhat ironically, however, whilst this is most of the time one of the production’s great successes, at others it becomes excessive, and results in a feeling of breathlessness, whereby some of the production’s most brilliant and hilarious moments are detracted from. Frustratingly this is not because episodes like Tartuffe’s proposition to Elmire or Mariane’s despair over her engagement to him are in any way lacking in themselves - quite to the contrary, they are exemplary displays of interpretative flair and comic timing. Rather it is because they are not given sufficient room to rise as high as they might as peaks of comic relief by means of contrast with a lower-pitched dramatic median.

However, integral to the delicious grotesquerie of the genre and played with such consistent committal by the whole cast, excess is, in general, suited to Tartuffe. From Georgia Wagstaff and Ryan Ammar’s petulantly adoring Mariane and Valère to Rachel Hunter’s cantankerous Madame Pernelle; Adam Patel’s impassioned Damis to Stefan Nigam’s self-satisfied Monsieur Loyal, each performance well and truly lived up to Molière’s scripted menagerie of vaudeville caricatures. Where excess threatened to stifle somewhat in the first half, it was tempered in the second by Julian Mack’s credibly avuncular portrayal of Cléante, the play’s voice of reason, and Emily Dance’s cool composure as an elegant Elmire, who ‘flirts’ refreshingly, if somewhat puzzlingly, a lot less ‘shamelessly’ with Tartuffe than the programme suggests.

The veritable flourish of Olivia Emden’s final performance as Law Officer (after her equally facially elastic Flipote and Laurent) brings the action to resolution with a French accent that is every bit the cherry on the gâteau of a delectable production. All in all it’s a ludicrously uproarious night of fun with a double-pronged comic purpose: to expose social disparities by ridiculing them, and to help us all to forget it’s Week 6.

And you’d never believe it but they’re all freshers…