It caused ecclesiastical consternation in the 17th century, but nowadays Molière’s skewering of pious pretension and rank hypocrisy is unlikely to offend anyone. Instead, in a 2008 version by Roger McGough, it’s a ribald, pungent pleasure that presents a richly funny portrait not just of the timeless figure of the conman, but of family life. And Gemma Bodinetz’s bright, brisk revival for Liverpool Playhouse and English Touring Theatre is a twinkle-toed delight. Ruari Murchison’s set of gilt and glass recalls the hall of mirrors at Versailles, cleverly referencing the deceptive double images that recur thematically throughout the play. This is the household of Orgon who, to the despair of his wife, children and sharp-eyed maid Dorine, has become besotted with Tartuffe, an impecunious fraud on the make. So much so, in fact, that he plans to marry his horrified daughter to him — though Tartuffe is more taken with Orgon’s own wife, Elmire.

As played by Joseph Alessi, Orgon is never going to get his way. His pointy moustache bristling, he attempts in vain to assert authority under his own roof; it’s plain from the way Rebecca Lacey’s pulchritudinous, velvet-voiced Elmire smacks her furled fan into her hand that she wears the trousers. Throw in the plotting of Annabelle Dowler’s ingenious, impertinent Dorine, and the rebellion of Emily Pithon’s jolly-hockeysticks airhead Mariane and his effete son Damis (Ilan Goodman), and he’s about as on top of things as Basil Fawlty. As for Colin Tierney’s Tartuffe, his maniacal laughter betrays a devil in disguise: “Rub some more stinging nettles into my hair shirt, will you?” With his ratty beard, rolling eyes and nastily stained cassock, he’s deliciously creepy, and his and Orgon’s bromance — in which Orgon, giddy as a schoolgirl, is all coquetry and cuddles — is hilarious. Orgon is deaf to the advice of his brother-in-law, Cleante (a drily witty Simon Coates); his illusion is only shattered when Tartuffe actually attempts to mount his wife, his filthy, pale naked buttocks quivering with lust.

The ensemble playing is terrific, and Gough’s verse, packed with cheeky rhymes, anachronisms and running gags, is breathtakingly exuberant. Bodinetz handles the mounting frenzy with an aplomb that makes her staging a real treat — elegantly executed, and enormously entertaining.