Russell Kane's Fakespeare: The Tragickal Saveings of King Nigel

Comedian Russell Kane set himself the challenge of writing a modern comedy in cod-Shakespearean style and the result is pretty much a technical success, though somewhat more hit and miss as an hour's entertainment.

As a writer, he's got the rhythm and rhymed couplets down, and a few sprinkled “these” and “thous”, along with nice coinages such as a suicidal “self-toppage” catch the cod-Elizabethan flavour.

For the pedant, a nice touch is his take on Shakespeare's signature extended similes, with something described as being “as disrupted as a Ryanair passenger with moderately heavy luggage”, while a suggestion is dismissed as “less likely than Jim Davidson in a burka”.

As those examples suggest, much of Kane's comedy depends on name checks, with the audience laughing Pavlovianly to every mention of Piers Morgan, Jeremy Kyle, Ant and Dec or Howard from the Halifax.

The plot has something to do with a disgraced banker given the opportunity to regain his fortune by destroying an African country's economy and the only surprise is that he hesitates.

Sadie Hasler provides some comedy as his loyal secretary-mistress, though Kane himself seems more at home in the non-Shakespearean warm-up sequence.