Noises Off but the precision is on: Trousers down farce leaves me a little cold It leaves you just a little cold.

Here is a good cast, tightly drilled, working on a five-star set in front of a crowd eager for the thing to be a success.

But are there perhaps moments when watching this classic modern farce is like listening to an expert playing the harpsichord?

You admire the artistry. You wonder at the precision of the work. Yet it leaves you just a little cold.

Director Lindsay Posner has done superb work here, without doubt. The play tells the story of a touring theatre company playing a farce. The idea of that production has to be established first, with much door-banging, tightly cued entrances and, naturally, actors being reduced to their underwear.

In act three we return to the farce within a farce to see it all go horribly — brilliantly — wrong. Parts are agony to watch, as good farce should be.

Mr Posner is skilfully served by the likes of Robert Glenister (as an exasperated director), Janie Dee (the company darling) and Celia Imrie, who plays the grand-dame and ends the night hobbling on one foot, moving round the stage like a supermarket trolley with a wonky wheel.

Aisling Loftus and Amy Nuttall provide the lust interest for Mr Glenister’s groper. Karl Johnson is delicious as a deaf old drunk.

There are fabulously knotted jokes about whisky, nosebleeds and sardines, some of which end up on the floor, creating a skidpan.

Playwright Michael Frayn is clearly the sort of man who could solve a Rubik’s cube, so convoluted is the plot. It really is all terribly well done. But why do I hesitate to give it an unreserved rave?

The characters will be more familiar to actors than to civilians, if we can put it like that. That is my only quibble. Otherwise, good stuff.