Catch The Bubonic Play before it catches you

With more sauce than Heinz and slightly less than Benny Hill, Piggy Nero’s The Bubonic Play is a medieval jest about love, sex and the Black Death. This brilliant, funny play may not find a cure for the plague, but with its Carry On innuendo it is an hilarious therapy for whatever else ails.

Lord George of Ponsonby finally plucks up the courage to propose to his beautiful, buxom ward Mathilde, only to lose her to a wandering-handed minstrel. Ponsonby sets off to find the eloping lovers, and eventually a cure for the plague, even if it kills him, or even worse - takes him all the way to Leamington Spa.

Written and directed by Cal McCrystal [and the cast], The Bubonic Play is lewd, crude and hilariously vulgar, leaving no medieval stereotype or cliché unscathed. Well schooled in the rhythm method of acting, the casting is perfect. Overacting on this scale is difficult to pull off but this trio do it with style and a tongue firmly in any cheek they can find.

Mathew Baynton, wearing a pudding bowl haircut and a cod piece as the Minstrel, is cheekily funny. Beautiful, blonde and busty, superb comedienne Clare Thomson is deliciously saucy as the gorgeous but chunky-thighed Mathilde, and Jamie Glassman, the thief of bad gags as the ample Ponsonby, is an amiable ham with a lot of charm.

A pantomime for adults, The Bubonic Play is a ribald parody of Chaucer and Shakespeare that is wickedly dedicated to lascivious gags and simulated sex but still remains an inspired debauched romp. The Punch and Judy sketch where Mr Punch gets the John Wayne Bobbit treatment has audiences dying with laughter.

With a nod and a wink, bosom shaking and adept comic timing, The Bubonic Play’s accomplished performers work well together and interact with the audience so much that the actors are having as much fun as the crowd. This trio also sing surprisingly well and if acting is about honesty these players fake it well enough to make it believable.

With its silly songs, cloth set, mirror balls, remote control stage coach and clever script, the bawdy Bubonic Play farces in your face. The play’s filthy climax grossly bristles with fun. This production is a grin reaper and is as highly contagious as herpes. It also comes with scabs.

The Program, Sydney, 15th March 06