IT’S back and – you can release your breath now – Tartuffe is just as good as ever.

Tartuffe, the Capital of Culture homegrown highlight, has returned to the Playhouse stage with all the fizz, philandering and farce of its previous incarnation.

New to the cast is Liverpool-born actor Colin Tierney as the not-so-holy man himself. Eyes wide and long fingers clasped, he seems gripped in a permanent state of fervour – though it’s more lustful than religious.

He stalks about the stage in black robes that bear the stains of his shady character – but even these shabby garments are preferable to what is underneath, revealed in his funny- but-cringeworthy seduction of his host’s wife, Elmire.

Tierney’s facial expressions speak louder than his words – written in leaden prose – his eyes swivelling manically and his lips sucked in disconcertingly.

Joseph Alessi returns as the foolish head of the previously merry household, Orgon. Unsuspecting of Tartuffe’s deception, he plays the role as a love-struck schoolboy ever-trusting in his devotion to the man attempting to make him a cuckold. He teases the humour out of Roger McGough’s words, keeping just the right side of pantomime in a prime performance.

Meanwhile, Orgon’s family are conspiring to unmask the interloper’s true nature in a flurry of door banging and eavesdropping.