"To Canterbury, Walsingham: Compostella, Jerusalem; tread the highway, hard and long; tell your story, sing your song." Thus begins the Pilgrims' chant. "Mind you," agree pilgrims Jean and Mary (Anjella Mackintosh and Jenny Austen, sounding straight out of a Victoria Wood sketch), "you get a good bit of cheese in Canterbury; the food is revolting in Compostella."

Chaucer's Caterbury Tales

Here, and elsewhere, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are right up to date: "In a bent world, why bother to be straight?" suggests the Pardoner to his sidekicks, pillars of the church all of them. The Pardoner (a splendid performance from Stuart Parker) peddles both pardons and quotes "Holy Relics" to the gullible. Who said that sleaze was new?

The Canterbury Tales have a reputation for being bawdy as well as topical. John O'Connor's production for the City of Oxford Theatre Guild has its fair share of saucy stories, but uses imagination when telling them. The Reeve's Tale, for instance, a story of two students enjoying a romp with the Miller's wife (Val Shelley) and daughter (Grace Mountain) is most effectively presented as a silent film. But have no fear, the famously bawdy Miller's Tale is all present and politically incorrect, complete with bare bottoms projecting from the bedroom window. Downstairs the Miller (Peter Mottley) waves a baguette in indignation.

The Theatre Guild's large cast plainly relishes the many and varied demands made on it. There's much fun to be had here -- not to mention words of warning too: "Lechery, gluttony, sloth and pride, the gates of hell are open wide"