@ Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 16 May 2015

Where would drama be without mistaken identity? Carlo Goldoni’s 18th-century riotous comedy One Servant, Two Masters was reinvented by the National Theatre’s Richard Bean and Nicholas Hytner as One Man, Two Guv’nors (recently reviewed by The Wee Review here ). The Venetian Twins is another Goldoni farce, this time given an Edwardian makeover.

It’s a sign of the playwright’s genius that his work withstands wholesale transformation yet remains feelgood and relevant. Writer/director Tony Cownie has given the text a hilarious Scottish twist with accents from florid Edinburgh Banker to Broad Borders and (inevitably) some Gallus Glesga. And there are plenty of one-liners you will want to pass off as your own down the pub.

The provost’s malaprop-heavy daughter Rosaura (Dani Heron) is to be married off to Zanetto (Grant O’Rourke in sucker-punch roles), estranged identical twin of fruity-voweled Tonino (also Grant O’Rourke). Numpty Zanetto is “mingin’ rich” but while his wheel is going round, the hamster’s on holiday. While swollen-headed Tonino is pure of heart, he’s also pure dead posh. If the grasping provost’s daughter picks the right twin she’ll be “farting through silk the rest of her life.” Confusion reigns mostly because the twins are not only identical but identically dressed. Hey, that can happen. At one point Tonino announces in an aside to the audience, “if this was a play no one would believe it.”

You certainly need to keep your wits about you to follow the jigsaw puzzle plot and there’s much delight to be had in Cownie’s exuberant writing (that borrows liberally from 21st century street slang to therapy jargon) for supernumerary characters – not only the savvy suffragette (Jessica Hardwick), simpering dandy (a seemingly double-jointed James Anthony Pearson) and the wee dancer maid (Angela Darcy), but also the provost’s butler (John Ramage on top form) and the lusty priest (Steve McNicoll doing a hilarious hymn to James Robertson Justice ). There’s enough toilet humour here to make Mrs Brown blush.

Goldoni’s audiences – posh and pleb – relished his scatological and topical humour, ripe with the funk of the servants’ hall, as much as his skewering of those in authority and the way the servants see through the pretensions of their so-called betters. Fewer out and out boom-boom jokes might have let the text breathe a little in this tangy tangle of a story. Naturally, all comes right in the end, the loose threads loose no more.