No Naughty Bits, Hampstead Theatre, London

There is something appealingly – and aptly – absurd about the whole premise of Steve Thompson’s new comedy. It deals with the legal battle between the Monty Python team and a national American broadcaster in 1975, when the Pythons discovered that a censored version of their celebrated daftness was being broadcast coast to coast. It proposes Michael Palin as the knight in shining armour, determined, in his own awfully nice way, to stand up for the right to be rude, and features the volatile Terry Gilliam riding shotgun. It builds to a trial in which legal experts bring their highly trained minds to bear on the excision of the naughty bits from a supremely silly sketch. And it addresses the serious question of artistic integrity by focusing on the bums on the cutting room floor.

Very promising stuff and Thompson can write hilarious comedy, as his farce Whipping it Up demonstrated. Yet despite a lovely, surreal set from Francis O’Connor, featuring a giant Python foot and plenty of droll 1970s costumes, and an energetic staging from Edward Hall, the play takes a long time to get going. It seems to be travelling with the brakes on: early scenes establishing the legal situation are pretty stilted and arguments with the American representatives (Issy van Randwyck’s po-faced executive protesting that “people in Idaho will watch this”) are interesting, but only intermittently funny.

The show only really comes into its own in the second act, with a very funny court scene. In this hugely enjoyable, Pythonesque episode, Thompson finds his stride. He creates a delightfully funny judge (played with dry wit by Matthew Marsh), who proposes waffles rather than litigation, makes pronouncements such as “I’ve got laughter in my soul for you both”, and insists on sketches being acted out in court, to the chagrin of the network’s dyspeptic little lawyer (John Guerrasio).

Here the combination of seriousness and silliness works tremendously well and the show really lifts off. Issues such as taste, integrity, responsibility, censorship and national sensibility bubble up through the knockabout comedy. “Sometimes you have to blow a raspberry at the world” explains Harry Hadden-Paton’s charmingly decent Palin. And Sam Alexander’s Gilliam proves his point when he ends the show on a laugh by tripping across the stage with a strategically placed policeman’s helmet covering his naughty bits.

Hampstead Theatre