David Vass reviews the revival of Ideal starring Johnny Vegas at the Diss Corn Hall

Twenty years ago, tucked away on BBC3, Ideal made its debut.

Starring Johnny Vegas as Moz, a small-time drug dealer in Salford, the surreal sitcom thrived on a parade of unhinged visitors and a darkly amoral universe.

Despite respectable viewing figures, the show was cancelled after seven series, leaving its story unresolved.

Creator Graham Duff has now revived Ideal on stage to give fans a final hurrah.

Some of the original cast returned, with Lucy Farrett stepping in as Moz's girlfriend.

Alongside Vegas, we got Ben Crompton as perpetually paroled Colin, Ryan Pope as Psycho Paul (a Noel Gallagher-channeling thug), Joanna Neary's reformed necrophiliac Judith, and Emma Fryer as the sharp, self-serving Tania.

Vegas played Moz with his usual offbeat charisma, though seemed to get the biggest laughs when stumbling through lines.

It was Fryer, however, who gave the most convincing performance, her dynamic with Psycho Paul proving particularly compelling.

Though technically standalone, the play catered mostly to long-time fans, the show's charm relying heavily on nostalgia. However, Duff seemed constrained by actor availability. Nicola Reynolds and Tom Goodman-Hill appeared only via phone calls and their grounded characters sorely missed.

It was these characters that provided a vital contrast in the original series, and their absence left the onstage madness lacking their more grounded contribution, the result being that the show often teetered toward pantomime.

It’s also fair to say that the production suffered from its ambitious staging. Action jumped between Moz's bedsit and Paul's hideout, unlike the original show.

I’d have thought that approach would have been ideal for theatre, but instead this back-and-forth slowed momentum and required clunky scene changes that demanded both patience and suspension of disbelief from the audience.

It should be said that fans applauded familiar faces and roared with laughter throughout, and unlike John Cleese's repackaged Fawlty Towers, Duff has at least offered new material.

Yet when it was revealed that Cartoon Head was just whoever wasn't onstage at the time, the show's lack of substance became clear.

Fun? Absolutely. But for all its nostalgia, it wasn't ideal.