Theatre; Tartuffe Almeida Theatre, London

Tartuffe is more dark comedy than farce, but the unwritten rule "make sure you have good, solid doors" still applies in a play that generates laughter with eavesdropping, sudden entrances and hasty exits.

Jonathan Kent's boisterous production of Moliere's comedy of religious hypocrisy kicks off to a great start with the wonderfully versatile Almeida theatre space transformed by the curve of a heavily-panelled mahogany- toned corridor decorated with carved saints, sweeping up to a set of suitably sturdy doors. Rob Howells's design bespeaks wealth, grandeur and austerity: everything you need to know, in fact, about a household about to be torn apart by the machinations of the villainous Tartuffe, the impostor from hell who speaks of little but heaven.

With his monkish garb, eschewal of worldly vices and displays of religious zeal, Tartuffe has bamboozled Orgon and his mother (an imperious Patsy Byrne, looking like Lewis Carroll's Duchess as dressed by Holbein), but no one else is convinced. "Do you hold that counterfeit is just as good as gold?" cries Cleante. Ian McDiarmid plays Orgon as a man possessed, a lunatic glint in his eye and a fiery physicality that sends him, quite literally, up the wall in frustration. This makes the potentially preposterous notion of forcing his daughter to marry Tartuffe seem perfectly plausible. Emma Chambers, who is carving out a bright career playing a succession of dim girls (will someone please cast her in The Country Wife), is hilarious as his daughter, helpless in the face of her father's fanaticism.

The depth of feeling underpinning her mounting hysteria illustrates the production's strength, which derives from playing the pain beneath the comedy. When Elmire turns the tables on Tartuffe, a stock comedy hoodwinking scene becomes altogether more violent and disturbing. Kent raises the stakes and whips up tension by vividly dramatising the very real dangers for the characters. You laugh at Elmire's fake seduction, but feel a growing horror as Tartuffe takes advantage of the situation. When is Orgon going to halt the charade?

"I'm no angel, nor was meant to be," says Tartuffe in Richard Wilbur's bouncy translation, and with his lank, bedraggled hair, Tom Hollander resembles a pre-Raphaelite muse after several nights on the tiles. His slightly nasal, deliberate delivery speaks volumes about his ability to dupe Orgon, but a succession of mean-spirited roles (The Threepenny Opera and Mojo) is taking its toll, whereby he sometimes seems to be acting in a vacuum. His hypocritical detachment is essential, but begs the question, why did Orgon capitulate in the first place? McDiarmid fills the gap with occasional, subtly placed hints of homoeroticism, but it leaves an odd unanswered question at the heart of this pleasurable production.

Booking: 0171-359 4404