Star rating: *** There's precious little love in Alan Ayckbourn's 1969 comedy about three suburban couples brought together by work and adultery. In fact, so pessimistic is the play's view of marriage that it very nearly ends in tears rather than titters.

Star rating: ***

There's precious little love in Alan Ayckbourn's 1969 comedy about three suburban couples brought together by work and adultery. In fact, so pessimistic is the play's view of marriage that it very nearly ends in tears rather than titters.

That said, it's difficult to imagine a sharper production than this one, directed by Alan Strachan and featuring a superb central performance by Nicholas le Prevost as Frank Foster, an endearingly bumbling soul who takes the whole play to realise that his wife Fiona has spent a night with his subordinate colleague Bob Phillips.

The curtain rises on a set that merges the homes of the two families: the expensive, orderly reception room maintained by Fiona Foster and the not-so-organised chaos created by Guardian reader and desperate housewife Teresa Phillips (Claudia Elmhirst). A phone call makes it clear that we're watching two separate but simultaneous scenes.

As the adulterous pair concoct alibis for the previous night, they set in motion a chain of events into which the clueless Featherstones are drawn. With the introduction of this couple, Ayckbourn invites us to consider how comparatively functional the other two marriages are. William, a controlling bully, disciplines the mouse-like Mary (perfectly played by Amanda Royle) with a regime of physical and psychological abuse to which the audience responds with uneasy laughter. The character who most deserves a good slap never gets one, unfortunately - at least not from the person entitled to give him one.

Some exquisite observational comedy just about compensates. Frank's attempt at business-like marriage guidance is priceless, and his reinvention as Mr Carrycot is a memorable masterstroke.