Swearing Shakespeare has crowd roaring as Les Dennis struts like a rock 'n roll Big Bird and f-bombs detonate liberally

The Shakespeare North Playhouse finally reeled me in with its casting of Les Dennis as Malvolio in Twelfth Night and, two years after it opened, I am very glad it did as I will be going again.

All of the Shakespeare I've seen previously have been tragedies like last year's Ralph Fiennes-starring Macbeth so it was a welcome change to see this mistaken identity comedy which genuinely had the crowd roaring laughing. The stage of the Cockpit Theatre is intimate and in the round (it's like a circle in the middle of the theatre surrounded by the audience), with backless seats and metal frames in front, encouraging the audience to lean in on their elbows and watch the action below.

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As you enter, the actors are already on stage waving up at the audience and shouting out questions and greetings before a jester starts warming everyone up with jokes and interactive singing.

I couldn't help thinking how this production, with regular injections of pop and rock music, actors playing instruments on stage, and liberal injections of F-bombs and modern English (I don't think the phrase 'bell end' is authentically Tudor), was so much more accessible then many Shakespeare productions I've seen before. It felt like it was really fulfilling the idea of bringing Shakespeare back to the people like it was in the bard's day. They even got some older ladies in the first row up from the audience to indulge in a rave scene, to much amusement.

The action in the play begins with a shipwreck which leaves twins Viola and Sebastian separated and each believing each other drowned. The staging of this play though has the cast dressed up like they're at a music festival and the leads enter playing guitar and bass before being separated by an overindulgence in what looks like cocaine.

The farcical action takes off from there with a girl dressed up as a boy and her new master getting uncomfortably warm feelings about his new 'manservant', among other plotlines. Les Dennis plays the stuffed-shirt butler Malvolio who has a trick played on him and spends the second act dressed like an alpha Ali-G, swathed in a massive padded banana yellow coat with matching Crocs, with his hair spiked up and swaggering like Mick Jagger as he attempts to woo a disinterested yet increasingly alarmed noblewoman.

He's the big name here amongst younger actors and he earned the star billing. Any qualms I had about watching Shakespeare from a man I knew mostly for his impression of Mavis Reilly from Corrie and hosting Family Fortunes evaporated when I realised how well suited a life-long comic is to this role. He gets a lot of laughs just by the way he walks and winds up the audience but also manages the sadder aspects when the joke goes too far.

The audience very much enjoyed the rude, crude and in your face adaptation and I did too, although the festival setting doesn't mesh that well with some of the play's plot points. My highlights were Purvi Parmar as Olivia singing Stay by Shakespears Sister, and Jack Brown as comic relief Sir Toby Belch channelling Rik Mayall as Lord Flashheart from Blackadder. Woof!

Twelfth Night is on at the Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot until June 29.