He's a beast I tell you - a real animal. . .' What happens when you've lived only for pleasure, and you finally run out of time? When you've broken every promise, outraged every decency and slept your way through half of Europe - where do you turn as the clock starts to tick towards midnight?

Molière's play was originally written in prose, and was withdrawn after 15 performances after attacks by Molière's critics, who considered he was offending religion and the king by glorifying an atheist and hedonist. This adaptation by Neil Bartlett, his last as artistic director at the Lyric Hammersmith, is, apart from some cuts in one rather long scene, the play that Molière wrote, but with fresh, modern language which allows it to be set in a timeless world, with a minimalist set.