THIS Liverpool taxi comedy has been travelling around local theatres for around 17 years now so it should be honed and refined by now.

It is certainly honed under its latest director Sylvie Gatrill but refined is not the word for Tony Furlong and Jimmy Power’s show.

It’s a warts-and-all view of a taxi driver’s fares as he patrols the streets of Liverpool on Christmas Eve.

So there’s some rough language, a little bit of rudery and lots of one-liner jokes.

It is not so much a play as a series of sketches held together by the character of the taxi driver and those he meets.

The driver is played in grand style by Louis Emerick who brings a care-worn sense of humour to the role, brash but desperate to earn some money.

He opens the show with a monologue about the taxi driver’s lifebefore setting off to find customers.

The cab has the top and side doors missing so we can see what goes on inside as well as outside the vehicle. Four actors play numerous characters displaying an amazing versatility: Danny O’Brien’s roles include a transvestite, a scally and a naked man, stripped on his stag night.

Alan Stocks does a few drunks and an Elvis impersonator, stopping at a couple of points to sing Elvis numbers for the weakest of reasons.

The larger-than-life Lindzi Germain is a drunken woman (very funny), a wheelchair- bound loudmouth and a woman whose husband was a cabbie (and who died as a result).

And most amazing transformation of all, Eithne Brown is a cheeky prostitute and then a woman depressed with cancer (the most poignant role of the night).

It’s a crude, bitty sort of show but at least it’s rarely dull.

Philip Key