Matters gynaecological are not to everyone’s taste. Stir in religious fundamentalism, simmer for two hours without interval, and you could be writing the recipe for an unleavened theatrical dough-ball.

Not so. Pseudonymous playwright Jane Martin has constructed a play about abortion that’s untarnished by polemics or the dead weight of political correctness. Somewhere in America an innocent becomes embroiled with fanatics.

Keely is pregnant. She was raped and wants an abortion. When she wakes up she’s handcuffed to a bed in a locked room. What splendid luck – she’s been ‘rescued’ by a shadowy pro-life group who can ensure that her pregnancy goes full term.

By turns sullen and aggressive, Joanna Foster (Keely) rides the mood swings of incarceration and isolation with anger, confusion, and helplessness. It’s a feisty, bed-bound performance that carries the audience all the way.

The biggest surprise is Du (Vilma Hollingbery), a mother hen of a captor who pads around Keely’s cell in sneakers and cardigan. Yarning, fussing, and preaching, she defies fundamentalist stereotypes.

The Pastor is easier to recognise. He’s obsessed with the sanctity of family and the reproductive tract. Played on the verge of lunacy by Michael Napier Brown, he struts his way through interminable ontogenic lectures in what passes for religious education.

This is a provocative and adrenalin-releasing performance that never ceases to surprise. Take a chance on it, but be prepared for a stiff drink afterwards.

Colour is reserved for the fairies. With a rustle of silk, the mortal world is stripped away to reveal their magically sparse domain. But don’t expect gossamer-winged cupids. These are malevolent tribal sprites who dance and chant in overlong discordant ritual.

Roger Lloyd Pack is the sitcom star who contributes to box office receipts rather than the play. His Oberon and Theseus are hesitant, interchangeable monotones with arm movements on loan from another production.

The provocatively cast Annette Badland (Titania and Hippolyta) challenges preconceptions about fairy delicacy. Jacqueline Defferary is wonderfully shrill and bitchy as Helena, while Helen Baxendale (Hermia) chooses the gangling, bespectacled Sean Harris (Lysander) over the smoothly confident David Elliot (Demetrius).

Puck is played with Gaelic camp by Jonathan Arun. This lipsticked leprechaun packs enough blarney to furnish a dozen Boston bar-rooms. And with bowler and brolly, Chook Sibtain (Mustardseed) is a fairy incubus out of A Clockwork Orange.

Bottom, as always, steals the show. One moment Andrew Joseph is an oafish prole, the next he’s cavorting in a bubble bath with an Elizabethan siren. At least it doesn’t end badly for him. After the bubble bursts, it’s back to life with a bemused shaking of the head. And there’s the great flaw in the play: the notion that you can meddle with love and nobody gets hurt.

Into this antithesis of a disorderly house strides Kawabata, a widower in his seventies. He’s looking for answers but, like all the other washed-up guests, he’s just afraid of the dark. Even when stripped to his underpants, James Beattie brings a dignity to the disintegrating Kawabata, only undermined by a tendency to scratch the tip of his nose.

Tamara Hinchco infuses Michiko with a seen-it-all-before motherliness. She dispenses tea and soporifics with all the charm and reassurance of a WRVS veteran.

But the choice of English actors stretches the play’s credibility. The formality of their sparse and measured dialogue contradicts the noise and throng that Japanese tourists bring to Britain. As if to compensate for the all-too-scrutable European faces, the audience is subjected to a ten-minute prologue of seriously inscrutable mock Noh theatre.

Playwright, David Henry Hwang, has created a bleak world in which old age is synonymous with hopelessness. For Kawabata and Michiko it’s a life sentence from which death is a blessed relief. Fortunately their long-awaited demise provides a welcome opportunity to get back to the bar.

If your attention span is stretched by the omnibus edition of East Enders, you’ll find The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) is religion on a manageable scale. This is a Bible for the TV generation: a Readers’ Digest version of the truth which miraculously retains all the sex and violence of the original – plus every single wisecrack from the Book of Job.

Yes, abridgement can be rollicking good fun. In the hands of Matthew Croke, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor, the King James Version is reduced to an open-toed land of milk and honey – while the audience is reduced to tears. You’ll hear how Moses knocked God down to just ten commandments after some tough bargaining. Alas, adultery turned out to be non-negotiable.

Jokes come faster than the stone that slew Goliath. The audience get soaked, showered with leaflets, and dragged on stage to perform animal noises for a re-enactment of Noah’s ark. With songs, dances, and magic tricks, The Bible is irreverent slapstick, yet never strays beyond the bounds of good taste.

And in Harborough Drama Society’s production of Dick Whittington, the TVs steal the show. Sarah Suet (Michael Saggers) and Idle Jack (Sue l’Anson) had us roaring so hard you’d think Leicester City had just scored.

Tommy the Magic Cat (Marilyn Holderness, cross-species dressing) zapped more rats than Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mr Mussel (Len Bale, cross-channel-ferry dressing) played the fool with such enthusiasm that there should be a place for him on the Town Improvement Committee.

We shouted loudest at Queen Rat (Jeanne Moore) but she was more ermine than vermin and didn’t frighten me. My maths teacher, Miss Privet, is more scary. We never shout at her.

And we cheered for the good guys: Dick Whittington (Ruth Moore), who must have been troubled by mosquitoes because she kept slapping her thigh, and Fairy Tinkle (Alison Dodd) whose skin-tight costume prompted my Dad to say that she could ring his bells any time. Honestly, adults act like kids sometimes.

There was a brilliant chorus line too. They changed costume faster than Joan Collins and knew enough semaphore to order themselves an Indian takeaway direct from the stage.

Pantomime is mega. You can sing idiot songs and scoff sweets till you’re sick. For a moment we all forgot that the roadworks are not yet finished.

"Oh yes they are."

"Oh no they’re not."

"Oh yes…"