Showing @ Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 7 May

There’s something in British culture which considers sarcasm and wit that appeals to intellect as a debonair kind of humour and favours it over farce, with visual slapstick and double entendre (almost) only staged in panto season. When Moliere was writing, farce was used to criticise the bourgeois by parodying them. Liz Lochhead’s translation of Moliere’s L’ecole des Femmes (School for Wives) discards our reservations and inhibitions by making us laugh at ourselves. And it works.

Old, crabbit bachelor Arnolphe (Peter Forbes) intends to marry his humble ward, Agnes (Nicola Roy). When her lover, Horace (Mark Prendergast), unknowingly confides in Arnolphe his secret plan to elope with Agnes, fate, frolicking and farce interrupt Arnolphe’s plans to keep her to himself.

Dramatic irony is a hook, poetry the swing and Forbes’ performance the punch as he leads a seven-strong cast from Moliere to mayhem. The poetic Scots employed by Lochhead, as in her version of Moliere’s Tartuffe, gives each scene and transition rhythm, but it is the dramatic irony of the plot which drives the action. As with some of Lochhead’s previous work, Brechtian techniques verfremdungseffekt and gest are subtly integrated into Tony Cownie’s direction, alienating the audience from the play and provoking laughter throughout the auditorium; Hayden Griffith’s quaint panto-esque set and period costumes become part of the self-aware, melodramatic comedy which scathes Arnolphe’s chauvinistic character. John Harris’ bright lighting spills on to the audience enahancing this idea. Moliere said “as the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I see no reason why anyone should be exempt.”  Nothing triumphs more than a deserved come-uppance; if anything, it undermines our complacency. And that’s an education.