It's a good job the enlightenment has already happened in western society or the Reduced Shakespeare Company would have been burned at the stake long ago.

Don't believe the publicity that the show The Bible - The Complete Word Of God (abridged) takes "an affectionate, irreverent" fluffy tickling stick and pokes it at the so-called Good Book. The show I saw at Dunstable's Grove Theatre had the iron fist of atheism wrapped up in the velvet glove of slapstick comedy.

As far as the show goes, you know what you're getting with the RSC and I think from a personal point of view the formula is getting tired and in need of a bolt of lightning to come and electrify it. There was lots of running around, getting members of the audience on stage to play animals in Noah's Ark and plenty of tomfoolery and slapstick.

When I first saw the RSC some years ago the formula seemed full of energy but now it's a bit like your uncle at the family Christmas party. He used to know how to dance to The Carpenters but hasn't adapted it to The Prodigy.

Perhaps that's why the Grove's auditorium was at best only one-quarter full (or three-quarters empty if you are a pessimist). Or perhaps Christians had decided to vote with their feet and not go along?

That's not to say I didn't enjoy the show crafted by the three-man American acting team of Jack Bennett, Simon Cole and William Meredith.

Dunstable is the "most Godless town" they've been to, apparently, after they asked how many of us had actually read the Bible from cover to cover. Shucks guys, I bet you say that to everyone!

According to the trio, the 10 commandments which didn't make it into the Bible include "Thou shalt not dwell overnight in Downside" and "Thou should not wed anyone from Houghton Regis," which got them chuckling in the aisles. It at least shows they did some work on local prejudices but it was hardly a case to call the paramedics because my sides were splitting.

I laughed a bit more after the break when the Monty Python influence really dawned on me. Three dancing Jesus's performing miraculous card tricks and Revelation - The Musical, with the catch line "That's Armageddon" to the tune of "That's Entertainment" being the most Gilliam-esque moments.

And the funniest joke, I thought anyway, involved a question about the Jews being God's chosen people. "How can we be the chosen people when Israel is the only place in the middle east without oil?"

Much of this kind of stuff would have stirred up huge controversy barely a handful of years ago but now those people who would object realise that they don't have to go.

One wonders, however, if the RSC would dare do a similar show poking fun at the Muslim holy book, the koran. Somehow, I doubt it...

For more shows at Grove Theatre, click here.