THIS wonderful farce, written in 1970 by Dario Fo, is brought bang up to date and transferred from Italy to the West Riding in Deborah McAndrew's inspired adaptation for Northern Broadsides.

Michael Hugo gives the performance of his career as The Maniac, imbued with almost supernatural understanding as well as an inexhaustible talent for impersonation. He leaps around like Wayne Sleep, gurns like Jerry Lewis and prattles like Frank Spencer doing Max Wall – and that's before he begins to take off a series of institutional types.

His greatest masterpiece is his caricature of the judge, who exposes the corruption of a group of policemen involved in the death of a small-time anarchist. But even funnier is his one-legged Scottish forensic scientist.

First to be driven to distraction and self-revelation is Anthony Hunt's brutally macho Det Insp Bertozzo. Craig Rogan, as his next victim, Det Insp Pisani, does a good line in tweaking his head and flexing his shoulders the way modern stage coppers do.

The corrupt DCI is hammed up by Neil Caple, and Matt Connor threatens to steal scenes as the constable miring colleagues ever deeper, under the scrutiny of Ruth Alexander-Rubin's investigative journalist, Maria Feletti.

With Conrad Nelson's inventive direction, this is an achingly funny play, quite the best thing you are likely to see for long time. It runs till tomorrow.