James Bond is two weeks away from renewing his licence to kill, but something just as thrilling is happening in Hammersmith - theatre has renewed its licence to laugh. A mix of spy spoof and Oscar Wilde production, Spyski! justifies every one of the adjectives that get flung too readily at this sort of high-comic caper. So if words such as “uproarious”, “anarchic”, “joyful” still have any purchase, their hour has come. While the Spyski! creators Peepolykus (here John Nicholson and Javier Marzan) have delivered great moments of clowning before, they've never come up with a show so ambitious, so well told.

The subversion begins before you even take your seat, as the Tannoy tells you that The Importance of Being Earnest is about to begin. And begin it does - on a Victorian drawing- room set, as Nicholson, Marzan and the co-stars Richard Katz, Sophie Russell and Rhona Croker pull off the tricky task of overacting perfectly. The show proper starts only once the security man shouting into his walkie-talkie finally leaves the stalls.

A satire on the surveillance society? A bit. Spyski! is inspired by the poisoning of the Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko last year. Yet its “true” story of how Nicholson was recently roped into an international plot goes to places behind and beside the headlines.

The writers, Nicholson and Steven Canny, and the director David Farr use every tool in the box to tell their story - even as they mock it. The set becomes a sleeper carriage, a Siberian maternity ward, the 14th hole of a pro-celebrity golf match. It's a bit le Carré, a bit Hitchcock, a bit Bond - but, like all the best parodies, it makes you care as well as laugh. Is Katz's Russian oligarch to be trusted? Will love bloom for Nicholson and Croker? Can they retrieve the genetically modified baby left in a handbag in Victoria Station?

It looks daft, but this is highly skilled work - when did you last laugh throughout a two-hour play? And it's propelled by a gang-show mentality: Marzan's thick Spanish accent, Nicholson's oval face, the cast's actorly tendencies - everything is fair game.

Now, OK, if spy stories aren't your handbag, these theatrical games may not register. Thick and fast though the visual and verbal gags come, the show still sags in places. But comedy theatre with this much discipline, this much flair, doesn't comes along often. It's not great art. But it's stunning entertainment.

Box office: 08712 211722. To Nov 1. Then touring to Leeds, Warwick (www.peepolykus.com).

Editor's choice

• Guns N’Roses: Chinese Democracy
• The 50 Biggest Movies of 2009
• Quantum of Solace