Deborah McAndrew's remarkable update and adaptation of Dario Fo's comic masterpiece shows us what the future holds for the Halifax-based company.

Her script also presents us with a stark warning of the erosion of our civil liberties. No longer are we at the thin end of the wedge, warns the play, we are in the middle of the wedge and it is only getting thicker.

In the hands of McAndrew's partner, director Conrad Nelson, and a comically gifted cast, it is a reminder of the power of theatre.

Fo's masterpiece has been brought bang up to date, so much so that the script contains references to events from the past few weeks.

Michael Hugo, who seems more like Lee Evans than Lee Evans, plays the Maniac, a master fraudster who adopts the guise of a senior judge investigating a death in custody. He harangues and cajoles the officers who may have been responsible for the death of an anarchist who fell from a fourth floor window of a police station. From the moment he appears from inside a filing cabinet, Hugo's comic presence, in the hands of his director, escalates to the point of delirium.

Never allowing a chance to shoehorn laughs into the production escape, director Nelson pushes this way and that to achieve maximum impact to great effect.

The police office from which the anarchist fell to his death is full of gags – from a box file labelled Brazil shirt (the spectre of Jean Charles De Menezes hangs heavy) – to word play like "all we have achieved is to squeeze a couple of zits on the face of the body politic".

Last year saw Broadsides stage Lisa's Sex Strike, an equally brilliant adaptation of Lysistrata, by Blake Morrison. If this is the kind of alchemy it intends to keep creating, the company is set to be one of Yorkshire's finest exports for years to come.

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, November 24-29. Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, December 3-6.

Northern Broadsides, Viaduct Theatre, Harrogate