THE curtain on the final play of the Actors' Workshop Youth Theatre season opened with a sneeze, sniffle, cough and a whimper – and that was just its protagonist.

The young actors were performing Moliere's, The Hypochondriac, a play about a rich 18th-century French aristocrat convinced his pampered body is riddled with all manner of unsightly diseases and the hangers-on, dodgy doctors and gold-digging wife who feed on his insecurities.

But it is also a play about 18th-century France and the prancing aristocrats who filled its courts, their self-obsession and complete ignorance to a world outside of ballrooms.

The performance manages to show both sides perfectly, especially with its main character Argan, played by Shane Gough, who wheezes through the play all grunts and gurns, the tragedy of the man as keen as his razor-sharp one-liners.

An unforgettable colonic irrigation scene too unspeakable to describe is worth the watch alone.

Special mention must also go to Edward Haigh who plays the bumbling aristocrat Thomas Diafoirerhoea, a mess of opulent silk, purple hair and shambolic attempts to appear a man of the world.

As was the case with the France of the court of Versailles, there is little mention of ordinary people as the play lurches across the glittering dining rooms of its opulent sets.

But Neil Gakhal's servant character Toinet brilliantly captures their exasperated attitudes towards the idiotic nobles.

The entire play runs with the speed and intensity needed for classic farce and proves laughter is clearly the best remedy.