WHEN Moliere came up with the innovative and frankly convention-stomping plot for The Hypochondriac, I am not certain he had in mind singing interludes with titles such as ‘Blood in my poo’ and ‘Germs are everywhere’.

But I believe, like the audience at this all-singing all-dancing and frankly bonkers adaptation of the iconic play – for a Frenchwoman like me anyway – Moliere would have approved and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle, if only for the shock value if it all.

As much as I love Moliere – and you have to love the playwright as a French student or die trying - I cannot help revelling in directors’ attempts to inject some modernity in his plays, which one might argue have been done to death.

And despite settling for period costumes, modernity and a Monty-pythonesque gags pervade the production.

Of course choosing Tony Robinson- aka Baldrick in Blackadder- was certainly a step in that direction from the offset.

The Hypochondriac regales us with the story of Argan, a man who for all the ailments he supposedly assailed by should have been dead long ago. But despite his obvious good health he is convinced he is dying to the delight of his doctor who prescribes all kinds of costly treatments from leeches, bleedings and daily enemas to drinking his own urine.

When it comes to marrying his daughter, he is determined to arrange a match with a doctor to cut down on his medical bills.

Of course, his choice of husband – a gangly teenager, with a screw or two loose named Thomas Diafoirehoea and whose voice is just about breaking – is not at all to his daughter Angelique’s taste. Indeed, she has already given her heart to Cleante, a charming young apprentice.

Matters are complicated by Argan’s young gold-digger of a wife who is determined to scupper his plans, have him disown his daughter and send her to a nunnery so she herself inherits his fortune.

Moliere never trusted doctors,what he saw as their obsolete ideas, general ignorance of the human body and inability to treat even minor illnesses. And his scathing criticism of medicine is certainly prominent in the play with such wonderful lines ”his slowness and inability to understand any new information will make him an great doctor”.

Tony Robinson is a master of physical comedy and is the glue that holds the play together. A mention must be made to his ability to hold his performance together while ‘receiving’ an enema and literally mock-convulsing on stage while delivering his lines.

But the true star of the show is Thomas played to perfection by Craig Gazey. His role as the “village idiot”, as Cleante refers to him, could have been one dimensional but the actor turns Thomas into the most memorable, surprisingly subtle and of course hilarious character in the entire production.

While there is a lot to praise, the play may have gone slightly too far for my taste. The addition of an actual magic trick and a sudden slip into metatheatre thrown in almost as an afterthought catches the audience off guard unexpectedly. But overall it has to be the most original reinvention of The Hypochondriac I have seen. And for that it is absolutely worth seeing.

The Hypochondriac is on at the Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday, October 18.

- Marion Sauvebois