Killer comedy: The bumbling Ladykillers are back on stage - and they're dead funny Criminal ‘masterminds’ coming a cropper at the hands of Mrs Wilberforce

There is also a bullet-proof old lady, witty lines, much ripe acting and an ornate set with all sorts of slapstick tricks, but the basic appeal of this one-time Ealing comedy is the idea of criminal ‘masterminds’ coming a cropper at the hands of sweet, innocent, grandmotherly Mrs Wilberforce.

A quintet of violent robbers, led by Peter Capaldi’s ghoulish Prof Marcus, is no match for dotty old Mrs W. She lives in a ramshackle house next to King’s Cross in the Fifties.

Mrs Wilberforce is played to perfection by Marcia Warren (pictured), so venerable an actress that she received applause at the first night the moment she appeared.

I always find this Broadway practice odd — a sort of ‘well done for still being alive’. The plentiful applause for Miss Warren at the end is, however, indisputably deserved.

Things begin slowly and I feared I might tire of a motorised parrot. Slowly the plot acquires a mad force as Welsh, skeletal, rangy Prof Marcus assembles his, ahem, crack team of heist-meisters. They arrive carrying violin cases. Or are those rifles inside?

Of the thieves, James Fleet deftly plays a cowardly military type with a weakness for women’s clothes. I could watch Mr Fleet all day: he makes acting look so easy, earning laughter with one tiny stroke of some dress fabric.

Big Clive Rowe is a dim ex-boxer. Stephen Wight, who has irresistible comic flair, is a young man all twitchy from gobbling down too many speed tablets. Mr Wight’s character keeps taking accidental blows to the head — whack! — and later meets a decidedly ouchy end.

Ben Miller is Harvey, a foreign assassin with a poor grasp of English idiom and a suspicion that everything is going to go wrong, which indeed it does. More sticky endings than a Sellotape factory!

A car chase is cleverly done using Scalextric-style models. This surreal side is accentuated during a dispute about the precise hour for English afternoon tea and Mr Fleet’s character eventually cries, in outrage: ‘You’re making a mockery of teatime!’

There is some business with a doorknob which keeps flying off, as though by mistake. Lightbulbs pop, bannister sticks are skittled and there is a moment when the baddies squeeze into a tiny cupboard and look like something from a Picasso painting.

Meanwhile, the five villains pretend to be musicians. Asked to give a concert, they in desperation produce a dreadful din. It is, naturally, received with rapture.

Prof Marcus, with an arching of his eyebrows, explains impatiently: ‘Being fooled by art is one of the primary pleasures afforded the middle classes.’

So it is. But there is no mistaking the genuine appeal of this thoroughly jolly and classically produced show.  

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Went to see this a few weeks back in Liverpool - really amazing set and excellent Father Ted-esque humour from Graham Linehan! Do go see!

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