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