The Clink (NHB Modern Plays)

A riotously funny satirical farce in the tradition of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Shakespeare in Love, from the author of The Libertine.

Elizabeth I is tottering at death's door. Conspirators are everywhere. Lucius Bodkin, an Elizabethan stand-up comedian, becomes unwillingly involved in the political skullduggery and jiggery-pokery surrounding the ailing queen.

The Clink could pass itself off as a long-lost Elizabethan comedy. In fact it is a brilliant political satire offering many sharp parallels with our own times, when art must be sponsored, but to be sponsored it must be 'safe'.

Stephen Jeffreys' play was first staged by Paines Plough in 1990 on tour in Britain and Holland.