Pandemonium is a new satire about the Covid nightmare that uses the quaint style of the Elizabethan masque. Armando Iannucci’s play opens with Paul Chahidi as Shakespeare introducing a troupe of players who all speak in rhyming couplets. A golden wig descends like a signal from on high and Shakespeare transforms himself into the ‘World King’ or ‘Orbis Rex’.

This jocular play reminds spectators with a low IQ that Orbis is an anagram of Boris. The former prime minister, also labelled the ‘globular squire’, is portrayed as a heartless, arrogant schemer driven by ambition and vanity. He retells the main events of the pandemic with the help of an infernal aperture which works as a dungeon, a hospital and, finally, as a version of Hades into which the characters are sucked.

More allusion and subtlety may have improved this show. But its major failing is irrelevance

The cabinet is thronged with loathsome power-mad crooks. Dominic Raab, renamed Dominant Wrath, is described as ‘a day-long punch’. Michael Gove becomes ‘Michael Go’ on the flimsy pretext that ‘go’ is the one thing he won’t do. We meet Noddin’ Dorries, Jacob Rhesus-Monkey and Cressida Dick-joke. The present Prime Minister, Richer Soonest, is treated very leniently and it’s obvious that Iannucci and his director, Patrick Marber, have a soft spot for the mega-wealthy Tory chief. He’s played by Natasha Jayetileke as a charming computer geek with a secret passion for ballet. He pirouettes across the stage displaying his tapered trousers and his talent as a dance maestro. It’s fun to watch. And it’s a relief to see a loveable character amid this cast of ogres, ghouls and criminals.

The most loathsome figure, Matt Handjob, is played by Amalia Vitale in a snot-green jumpsuit which makes his seduction of a sexy special adviser even more revolting. The Handjob scenes are accompanied by flashes of memorable language. Passers-by curse him for inflicting horrible cruelties on the bereaved – ‘People reached through screams at untouchable friends’. But the passage ends with an elderly grandmother calling Handjob the C-word. Giving profanities to old ladies is the cheapest trick in the satirist’s lexicon. Yet more caricatures appear. Liz Truss, named Less Trust, enters as the Virgin Queen and speaks in a jerky, off-beat style that closely resembles Truss’s rhetorical manner. But the character then morphs into a spoof of Queenie in Blackadder, played by Miranda Richardson. There are too many layers of distortion and cross-reference here.

In its closing moments, the show takes an effective pop at GB News. Noddin’ Dorries, using a broad Scouse accent, interrogates Suella Bovverboy, who wears a gold-braided admiral’s tunic like the president of a banana republic. She speaks of arithmetic and says that her favourite number ‘is zero – but even zero is far too high’. She’s talking about immigration, of course, without mentioning immigration. More allusion and subtlety might have improved this show. But its major failing is irrelevance. The use of antique costumes and a half-dead English dialect make the satire feel remote rather than immediate. And do we really need to cut open these healing wounds and massage them afresh?

Matthew Dunster’s version of The Homecoming takes place on a large, airy set which looks completely wrong. The rich carpeting and the stylish old sofa suggest a family of Victorian merchants fallen on hard times. But Pinter’s play is about a gang of East End villains who can just about make ends meet. Their home should be a cramped and crumbling terrace that stinks of grease, testosterone and boiled dinners. That apart, Dunster’s approach to this surreal play works well. He bungs in a lot of ideas and energy – and hopes for the best.

The playing area, as large as a tennis court, gives the characters space to move around and express themselves. The scenes are divided up by riotous bursts of improvised jazz which is honked out at thrash-metal volume. And the disclosure of family secrets is marked by surreal illuminations. The characters freeze in the glare of a spotlight, like convicts caught on a prison roof trying to escape.

Jared Harris plays Max as a snarling, pitiless old brute. He’s good but sometimes inaudible. Lenny, a psychotic pimp who intimidates women with veiled threats, is rendered believable – and weirdly attractive – by Joe Cole. Ruth (Lisa Diveney) is one of the most inscrutable characters in 20th-century drama. She starts as a demure little goody-goody and turns into a ravening sexual predator within a few lines of dialogue. Diveney plays both sides exquisitely. The excellent character actor Nicolas Tennant brings a vibrant comic dignity to the role of Max’s bullied brother, Sam.

This is a thrilling, madcap ride through an insane family drama. Don’t ask what any of it means. Even the author claimed not to know. Sit back and enjoy the violence, the madness and the hilarity.