By Steve Dixon BBC News Online

Make no mistake - this is not the Morecambe and Wise tribute show, this is a loving homage to the genre of double acts.

The Play What I Wrote is a very modern take on how the straight and funny man work so well together when the timing is excellent, the lines are crisp and the slapstick is laid on with a trowel.

Eric and Ernie would be proud

Sean Foley and Hamish McColl's madcap blend of humour rides backwards through comedy time, with Foley apeing Vic Reeves' off-kilter routines, before the show finally lands full square in a Seventies Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.

The whirlwind 30-minute first half very much an hors d'oeuve for the sumptuous second part, as the Foley-McColl double act goes into side-splitting overdrive.

The whole performance wrestles between McColl - who wants to put on The Play What I Wrote with Sir Ian McKellern - and Foley, who has cut a deal with producer David Pugh (brilliantly hammed up by Toby Jones) to sell their theatrical souls and put on a cash-spinning Morecambe and Wise tribute show.

Well, with Sir Ian down the pub, of course, McColl's ghastly efforts at putting on a play ("Brave Beyond Words - yes, a play about an Indian who cannot speak") lead him to a crisis about whether he can ever be funny.

Charles Dance: Star turn

Foley is the rapier wit who bounces off McColl's melodramatic tantrums, but it takes a bizarre pep talk from Jones (as Pugh) about "inaudible laughter" to convince McColl to do the M&W show in the West End.

Sean Foley is, at times, like a rubber-legged chicken, the bottom half all at odds with what the rest of his body is up to, prancing round the stage, throwing looks at the audience.

Toby Jones, all wiry hair and pudgy chops, threatens to steal the show at times, with his brilliant take on Sir Charles Dance and the Maharajah ("I didn't know that was legal here?") and as Arthur, with his near-the-knuckle reminiscences of his dear old mum.

The on-stage appearance of Sir Charles, in silk dressing gown and cravat, suddenly brought the New Theatre tumbling back to Christmas 1977.

'Hide under my skirts'

Then the curtain raised to reveal a French Revolution dungeon, the set of McColl's The Scarlet Pimple, with Foley (as Morecambe) hanging from manacles on the wall.

Sir Charles as the Conte de Toblerone, brilliantly delivers McColl's appalling take on the revolution - "The order of the world is all scrambled up - like what eggs are" - evoking those classic Seventies television moments with some memorable lines - "Hide under my skirts and look up your friend in England".

The blistering pace, scene-stealing visual gags - Foley with cue cards chatting up a blonde in the audience - and the delivery of the lines are fantastic throughout.

For director Kenneth Brannagh, it must be a pleasure going to work with such a great cast, knowing they have done Morecambe and Wise proud.

The Play What I Wrote is being performed at the New Theatre, Cardiff, until 11 October.