The appeal of the National Theatre’s One Man, Two Guvnors can hardly be exaggerated, with a full house at Aylesbury Waterside Theatre lapping up every pratfall, double-entendre and downright crudery supplied by a supremely well-drilled cast. But from my seat in the stalls the show seemed too much of a not especially good thing that would have been significantly improved by half an hour hacked from its running time.

The mood was set for this near three hours of unashamed vulgarity by the news of David Croft’s death, which I heard on the car radio during the drive into Buckinghamshire. The cheery indecencies he brought to The Benny Hill Show and Are You Being Served? — Mrs Slocombe’s pussy et al — were reflected in Richard Bean’s script which translates Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters into 1963 Britain and the world of the seaside postcard.

Appropriately, the setting is Brighton, but as much the Brighton of Graham Greene as Donald McGill — a home to spivvy Londoners plotting get-rich schemes ‘dahn sarf’. None is spivvier than Charlie ‘the Duck’ Clench (Fred Ridgeway) whom we meet as he prepares to sanction the marriage of his bone-headed daughter Pauline (Claire Lams) to the drippily thespian Alan (Daniel Rigby) — think Laurence Olivier, over-acting — the son of his roly-poly bent lawyer Harry Dingle (Martyn Ellis).

You would suspect that Harry had had all the pies were it not soon obvious that a handsome proportion had gone down the throat of Francis Henshall (James Corden). He is the ‘minder’ to Pauline’s earlier fiancé, gangster Roscoe Crabbe, presumed to have been murdered but now back to claim his bride. Except that Roscoe really has been murdered, and his sharp-suited, tough-talking impersonator is his twin sister Rachel (Jemima Rooper) en travesti.

She turns out to have an amorous interest, too, in the comically upper-crust form of Stanley Stubbers (Oliver Chris). Needing a servant himself, he also hires Francis, following which this greedy, incompetent retainer has to conceal his dual role from both his bosses.

To a considerable degree, the show is a star vehicle for Corden, a popular TV comedian unknown to me but evidently a darling of the public. His energetic, well-judged performance clearly owes much to the skills of Cal McCrystal whose physical comedy direction backs up the work of director Nicholas Hytner. A slapstick dinner- serving routine, with a trembling geriatric waiter played by Tom Edden, is a particular delight. But as with those of Norman Wisdom, say, Corden’s idiocies eventually start to irritate rather than amuse, leaving one to take comfort in the production’s shafts of verbal wit — some of which derive from Francis’s proto-feminist girlfriend Dolly (Suzie Toase) — and the joy of the music supplied by four-strong skiffle/beat combo, The Craze, led by singer and songwriter Grant Olding.

Until Saturday. Tickets: www.ambassadortickets.com/aylesbury or 0844 871 7607. The play is at the Adelphi Theatre, London, from November 8