Red noses

First produced by the RSC at the Barbican in 1985, Barnes' 1978 'Red Noses' is a black comedy about the Black Death, a vibrant and slapstick hymn to the power of laughter and the human spirit. A dying man has an epiphany that he must serve God by spreading laughter, and, joined by another man who communicates by shaking limbs covered in tiny bells, he forms a pious brotherhood of joy, the Red Noses of Auxerre, to give cheer to a pestilent and doomed world.