GEOFFREY Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales in 1380; now, 634 years later, audiences are still chuckling at the racy bawdiness.

It does make you wonder if anything written today will endure 600 years.

The Canterbury Tales are lewd, rude and crude, a linked collection of short stories shared and enjoyed by a group of pilgrims heading for Canterbury.

This production is adapted for the stage by Tacit, a company specialising in immersive theatre, and features the ever-popular Miller’s Tale and the Reeve’s Tale, supplemented by the Wife of Bath, the Friar, the Summoner, and the Pardoner.

The concept of immersive theatre assumes the audience to be patrons of The Tabard Inn, where the tales are being enacted.

Consequently, the costumed actors are wandering around the auditorium, interacting with the audience.

The prologue, and much of the Tabard landlord’s dialogue, is delivered in original Chaucerian language, which is fine for A-level English students, but irritating, annoying and incomprehensible for average theatregoers.

This production features acoustic music, the six actors also playing a variety of folk music instruments.

This unusual idea of using traditional Irish and English folk songs such as Wild Rover and The Cuckoo’s Nest has tenuous links to the bawdiness of Chaucer’s Tales, but occasionally sounds incongruous.

Combined with some indistinct dialogue and character confusion, this imaginative production lacks the sharpness and acerbic wit of Chaucer’s original.

The Canterbury Tales runs until Saturday.