Harley Young takes a big hit from the noughties comedy bong with this hilarious stage adaptation
Where: The Lowry Quays Theatre
Showing at The Lowry until: Saturday 13 September 2025
Tickets: Available from £16.50 - book here
The Lowry says: Johnny Vegas stars as Moz, Manchester’s longest serving weed dealer, in a dope opera of epic proportions. Starring some of the hit BBC TV comedy’s most iconic characters and actors.
Moz and gangsters Psycho Paul and Cartoon Head must dispose of a dead body. But when they discover priceless diamonds inside the corpse, things spin out of control .
Can Cartoon Head be prevented from going on a killing spree? Can big gay Brian find true love? And can Moz survive the strangest night of his life?
What we say:
Marking 20 years since the first episode of the hilariously dark and surreal BBC sit-com aired, Moz (Johnny Vegas) burst onto The Lowry’s Quays Theatre stage with a bang (or should that be ‘bong’?) last night, alongside Psycho Paul (Ryan Pope), Cartoon Head (Curt Faltrey) and all the rest of the show’s lovable reprobates.
Two decades might’ve passed (acknowledged by the modern twists and turns mentioned throughout - OnlyFans and Deliveroo drug dealers, anybody?) but not all that much has changed in the grand scheme of things. Moz is still dealing, Psycho Paul and CH are still batshit crazy and wreaking havoc, and big, gay Brian is still…well…big and gay.
Johnny Vegas and Ben Crompton who plays Colin - the loveable rogue with barely two brain cells to rub together (I feel like we all know a ‘Colin’. If you don’t, you probably are ‘Colin’.) - kick off the show in Moz’s old Salford flat, riffing off-the-cuff jokes between one another in that charmingly captivating way they do so well when lines inevitably get forgotten.
As the storyline progresses, more and more of the original 2000s cast members are reintroduced, reminding us why we fell in love with their hilarious antics the first time around all those years ago.
The show is conveniently split into two halves with a 20-minute interval right in the middle, should you need a spliff break or have a corpse that needs taking care of (joking).
Throughout the two-hour performance, Vegas and the cast wrap the audience into a haze, sucking them right into the split-stage set-up and leaving them with a lasting, warm, fuzzy comedy high.
Follow Harley Young on Instagram @HarleyUpNorth
(Image credit: Andy Hollingworth)
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