KEY For Two is classic English comedy in the tradition of Brian Rix farces, Benny Hill and the Carry On movies, where matters of sex are all talk and no trouser action.

"It's just the right tonic for an evening out in the middle of an English winter," reckons director Frank Higgins, and how right he is.

John Chapman and Dave Freeman's Key For Two is gentle, old-fashioned humour for John Major's fondly evoked England of warm beer, village cricket and old dears bicycling to church.

On Stuart Stead and Martyn Hunter's open-plan set, bed and sofa are prominently placed: a sure sign of the sexual shenanigans to come in a romping tale of mistaken identity, errant husbands and irate wives.

We join the action with Harriet (Lynne Marsh) being a tonic for playaway Gordon (Roy Powell). The lights fade and when they rise again, the man emerging from the duvet is not Gordon but Alec (Graham Smith), Harriet's other bed-warmer: a typical piece of playful comic invention from Chapman and Freeman.

By juggling her diary, Harriet is keeping both men content, but when Gordon injures his leg and needs to take to bed, problems begin to pile up.

Enter young, apple-cheeked Anne (Sophie Ainsworth), with her very personal way of administering soothing medical attention, particularly when Harriet and Alec go out for dinner.

Anne's Antipodean husband, Richard (Andy Welch), arrives unannounced, drunk and disorientated and incapable of making sense, although he manages to declare his love for Harriet.

Gordon's wife, Magda (Chris Rigg), is under the impression he is in a nursing home, the cue for the play and performance to go into overdrive as Harriet is forced to pretend to be a matron, Anne dresses up as a ward sister and Alec can't work out what's going on. A short blast from the stern-looking Mildred (Eileen Wood) will see to that.

Marsh's Harriet is briskly efficient, forever trying to maintain control; Ainsworth's Anne, a flighty flirt; Powell's Gordon, amusingly demanding and incorrigible; and Smith's Alec, a picture of constant bewilderment. Welch's drunken turn as Richard is a scene stealer; Rigg's Magda the fierce queen of misunderstanding; and Wood's Mildred could scare a tree into moving.

Powell's cast frolics happily in the play's farcical interplay, picking up the pace in a far superior second half when some problems with forgotten lines and unclear delivery of lines are laid to rest and the characterisation ripens pleasingly.

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Updated: 10:23 Friday, February 28, 2003