THE Scary Bikers is a better play than title, which is always the right way round.

After the very low budget film Last Laugh and the family drama with the big cast, The Kings Of Hull, for Hull's UK City of Culture, John Godber turns his thoughts to Brexit, bikes and bereavement in this two-hander – and a second instalment of the King saga, Long Live The Kings Of Hull, is confirmed already for Hull New Theatre in September.

Your reviewer has long held that Britain's second most performed living playwright brings a consistency of quality to his two-handers beyond his more erratic bigger pieces. 1982's Happy Jack, 1983's September In The Rain and 1992's April In Paris are still staged regularly and, more recently, 30 years of hurt over the Miners' Strike could not be contained any more as the miner's son at last had his say in Shafted, a work that took Godber into the fertile terrain of Arthur Miller's broken men.

Written and directed by Godber for the John Godber Company and Wakefield Theatre Royal, The Scary Bikers is billed as a "new comedy about life, love and staying on your bike". It is all those things, but he writes best here about loss, the pain of bereavement, and our on-going divorce from Europe, and not for the first time he saddles up with Mrs Godber, playwright and actress Jane Thornton, to perform the premiere. After all, no-one has a better grasp of Godber's comic template than John and Jane.

Godber plays 65-year-old Don, a redundant West Yorkshire miner now working as a hospital porter, who likes cycling and Tour de France legend Eddy Merckx in particular, but nothing fills his days enough to stop him thinking of his late wife, Jean.

Thornton's Carol is bereaved too and on the cusp of 60. She is a former private school teacher and failed artist, now running a cycling café near York in memory of her cycling enthusiast husband Rob, who had a highly successful architects' firm in the city. Years back, Don was in the year above at Rob's school.

Their paths cross, graveyard flowers in their hands, then Don takes up an invitation to call in at the café, a 100-mile round trip on his bike. Flashback vignettes fill in the past with Jean and Rob, and Don's memories of the Miners' Strike. These scenes are full of Godber at his best: punchy comedy, knock-out pay-off lines, but moving too, both Don and Carol in tears.

Carol suggests that although they hardly know each other, they should do a bike ride across Europe, cutting costs by sharing a tandem. When do they meet up but the very day of the Referendum, June 23 2016, the day he voted Leave, she voted Remain. Let's call the whole thing off? No, they may have divergent views but they decide to stick together, heading in the same direction in a Godber metaphor for what ultimately we must do, now we are saddled with the result.

Both Carol and Don have their say, and though Thornton and Godber were both in the Remain camp, Godber puts that to one side to explore the reasons behind the Leave outcome through Don's opinions that recall Lucky Eric's speeches in Bouncers, while commentating on the state of politics in general, suggesting Westminster is now nothing but a training school for appearing on Celebrity reality TV shows. A protest vote, a bloody nose to those who never listen to the northern voice, that's the gist of it.

The Scary Bikers has all the hallmarks of an A-grade Godber play: social politics, relationships, physical theatre, a righteous anger and comic lines you wish you had said yourself, plus a Foxton design and hugely enjoyable performances. Brexit is usually a turn-off now, but not here.

The Scary Bikers, John Godber Company/Wakefield Theatre Royal, on tour at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until Saturday. Box office: 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com. The tour also visits Cast, Doncaster, April 26 to 29; box office: 01302 303959 or at castindoncaster.com.