THIS is the second significant Ayckbourn revival of the summer, running parallel with Sir Alan’s magnificent 40th anniversary reawakening of How The Other Half Loves on home soil in Scarborough.

Having loved the other half of the Yorkshire double, how would Tamara Harvey’s first chance at directing Ayckbourn stand comparison? It turns out to be an unfair contest, one that affirms the mastery of the master.

Harvey worked for Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2006 and 2007, and was recommended to the Playhouse by the knight himself, whose further advice was to tell her that, contrary to its title, Bedroom Farce was categorically not a farce.

Rather, it was a play where farcical situations arose from real people facing real predicaments. But in Harvey’s hands it feels exactly like a farce, as light and frothy as cappuccino, although some of the playing is more heavy-handed.

Written in 1975, and tied to that time like a Seventies sitcom, Ayckbourn’s play elicits its laughs from throwing the maelstrom force of an interloping fourth couple into the three bedrooms in three separate houses assembled cheek-by-jowl on one open-plan stage.

While hardly cramped, Anthony Lamble’s design nevertheless conveys the claustrophobic, calamitous impact of the ever neurotic, indeed strange, Trevor (Brian Lonsdale) and Susannah (Leah Muller), the only partners never seen in their own home but blithely destructive wherever they go.

This triptych also enables you to analyse the sentiment of Delia (Denise Black), that a bedroom says a lot about a couple. Ultra-conservative Delia and gentlemanly, dinner-jacketed husband Ernest (Christopher Ravenscroft) live in retired middle-class comfort, troubled only by a leaking roof and a disappointing anniversary dinner that has them daring to munch pilchards at midnight in bed.

By comparison with their marital bliss, self-obsessed Trevor and Susannah are in a state of marital blister, ruining the housewarming party chucked together that night by playful, unkempt newly-weds Malcolm (Robin Pearce) and Kate (Laura Elphinstone).

Trevor’s ex, Jan (Niky Wardley), will be there but partner Nick (Chu Omambala) will not, confined instead to his bed with a spinal injury, and Omambala certainly puts his back into playing the self-pitying, impatient patient to amusing effect.

Harvey’s production is too slow out of the blocks, Black and Ravenscroft both being underpowered, but Muller and Lonsdale successfully combine always outstaying their welcome in each home with never outstaying it on stage.

Bedroom Farce is a lesser play than How The Other Half Loves and this is a lesser production, but one whose bump-and-bruise comedy is not without charm.

* Bedroom Farce, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until July 4. Box office: 0113 213 7700.