Ella Godfrey and Simon West are no strangers to creating comedy for a Cambridge audience. The pair have written Shot in the Dark and How to Lie and Get Away With It, and adapted Eliza Haywood’s licentious proto-novel Fantomina into a successfully ribald play: Love in a Maze. They later took a version of Love in a Maze to the Edinburgh Fringe under the title Bad Habits, where it was praised as “comedy how it’s supposed to be done”.

The duo’s latest venture is an adaptation of Tom Sharpe’s 1974 novel Porterhouse Blue, a roaring satire of Cambridge and the perpetual tension between tradition and reform. The novel has never been adapted for the stage before, and this production promises to be a suitably tongue-in-cheek adaptation, which draws on the original satire and creates a funny, fast-paced extravaganza of Cambridge mockery.

Porterhouse is indeed the stereotypical stuffy Cambridge college, having proudly remained the same for over 500 years, with deeply traditional porter Skullion at its front and a cohort of elderly fellows at its core. When a liberal politician becomes master and plans to introduce a self-service canteen, a condom machine, and even female undergraduates, they don’t quite know how to react. The increasingly absurd battle for Porterhouse’s integrity results in three deaths, an incriminating television documentary and 2,000 inflated condoms raining down on Old Court. What the satire actually forces its audience to ask is whether traditions should be blindly upheld, by poking fun at those who desperately attempt to ensure that things do not change in Porterhouse.

West was the one who suggested staging Porterhouse Blue, having always thought it would adapt well to the stage, and upon reading the novel Godfrey agreed that the characters were writ so large and the stylized comedy so visual that it was easy to see how the text would translate to the stage. That is not to say that creating a faithful adaptation was simple – West and Godfrey are aware that they have to satisfy two audiences: those familiar with the book and its humour, and a generation of students who have not read the novel but are likely to identify with a satire set in Cambridge University.

“Sharpe has a really strong narrative voice”, says Godfrey, “and we’ve tried to retain that essence of the book in the play”. This is achieved primarily by introducing a narrator: under-porter Walter, mentioned only once in the book, captures the bite in Sharpe’s voice. Godfrey credits the cast for the success of the adaptation, telling me enthusiastically that the comedy works so well because “the actors are great, they’re amazing!”

It is not long before I discover this for myself, as I sit in on a rehearsal of the pair’s favourite scene (one of the few, they tell me, they have insisted on directing together from the beginning, because they both love it so much). In it, student protagonist Zipser (Adam Reeves) goes to see the college Chaplain (Tom Nunan) about a ‘sexual problem’ he has been having, but the advice he receives from the seedy old man is not quite what he was expecting. Reeves’ Zipser is wonderfully naïve, while Nunan has perfect comic timing as the hilariously salacious chaplain. The pair play off each other particularly well, especially considering this is the first time they’ve rehearsed this scene.

The performances from the outset are well characterized, and after letting the actors follow their instincts, Godfrey and West give more specific direction to give the scene the humour they want it to have. The pair’s attention to detail is evident in the way they explain motifs which feature throughout the production and debate how to get the best out of each joke. The result is a performance that is highly polished but feels delightfully spontaneous, the playful script brought out by the competent, deliberately caricatured performances.

When I ask if they think satirising the University within its own walls is a bold move, West hesitates, but replies that he doesn’t think so, because “Cambridge is good at criticising itself”. He tells me that they pitched the show during the Queens’ DoS email debacle, and that such recent controversies have actually created an atmosphere within the University that encourages a satire like this, which can playfully but subtly point out some areas Cambridge still needs to improve.

Given the current context of the University’s tendency towards self-evaluation, students are already aware that the institution has its shortcomings, so the directors aren’t expecting controversy in the play’s reception, even if they are hoping to add to the recognition and resistance of Cambridge’s often problematic history. West feels these conversations contribute to the continued relevance of Porterhouse Blue, forty years after the original novel’s release.

Indeed, the 1970s Cambridge of the play is strikingly similar is to the way the University still is now. It is the fact that Porterhouse is so recognisable which makes the show so relevant despite the distance. It forces us to question why there is not more of a remove; why we retain so many questionable habits as a university purely for the sake of tradition. It lets us laugh at Cambridge’s absurdities, and indeed West tells me “everyone is fair game” for satire within the play. This is a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously; it is slapstick and stylized but there is an uncomfortable undercurrent which, when allowed to break through the humour, challenges how the University functions, now as much as in the 1970s.

Porterhouse Blue is on at the ADC Theatre, 6-10 February