EVERONE has a second chance the second bounce of the title if they have the guts or can be bothered.

Two old school friends contemplate this life change when reacquainted after a ten-year hiatus by a reunion party that boozing Luke can't remember and David would prefer to forget.

David (Tom Cantrell) has slumped into the slough of despond of middle-management, mortgage slavery and a misfiring marriage. He likes order but awakes gingerly to the strange smells and discarded fag and crisp packets of Luke's flat; what he needs is a change of scenery and disorder, as hung-over busker Luke (Michael Lightfoot) will tell him once he awakes for his cigarette breakfast.

This dilemma is the shirt versus the T-shirt, the opportunity versus the missed opportunity, for the Cold Feet and This Life generation, written and performed by college friends Cantrell and Lightfoot in a one-act play with shades of Beckett's Waiting For Godot, Pinter's pregnant pauses and the intuitive, anarchic bonding of Cook and Moore.

Nick Drake, Aimee Mann and Sufjan Stevens add musical commentary to a philosophical, poignant drama with surprising clout under the precise direction of Kate Lovell.

By contrast, the York company's debut work, Return Of The Actor, is a frivolous, fast and daft sketch show inspired loosely by Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, as two hapless backstage assistants blow their moment in the sun with Ian McKellen. It works too hard for its rushed laughs, but Second Bounce is richly promising.