IT was just like the old days at Hull Truck this week. There stood John Godber in the foyer, directing the umpteenth revival of his most performed work, the one that made the National Theatre’s list of the top 100 plays of the 20th century and is now a school set text.

Only this time, it is a touring show, mounted by the John Godber Company and Wakefield Theatre Royal, where he is the creative director after his departure from Hull during the Andrew Smaje wilderness years, when Hull Truck lost its identity.

Bouncers, Hull Truck and Godber will forever be synonymous with each other, no matter how many productions are mounted elsewhere, and this 2014 throwback revisits its vintage 1980s format of four beer barrels, four identical handbags andreferences to Steve Wright on Radio One, permed hair and Leeds United trying to get back into Europe.

What’s more, these Mr Cinders nightclub bouncers are very much bouncers, in their ill-fitting DJs and bow ties, and not the booted, coated, radio-equipped doormen of today.

What doesn’t change through the years is the binge-drinking of the lads and lasses played by Godber’s bouncers, nor the “dark side of clubbing” that head bouncer Lucky Eric – Godber’s on-stage conscience – bemoans in his “speeches”.

“Although the play is funny, underneath it’s actually quite pathetic,” says Godber in his programme Q&A. This is even truer today, now that boorish boozing is the subject of reality TV documentaries of Brits abroad. Over the years, directors have tended to update Bouncers’ nightclub soundtrack or cultural references and Godber himself did a Bouncers: The Remix. This time, instead, it is Retro Bouncers both in look and soundtrack and even the casting of veteran Bouncers A-listers, the abrasively amusing Adrian Hood, Dave Macreedy and Rob Hudson (who, incidentally, has worked as a bouncer in his acting “rest” periods).

In his programme tips on casting, Godber likes his bouncers to look like bouncers. “We have three out of four for this production,” he says. “There’s always one who doesn’t, yet seems the most dangerous”. Step forward Bouncers virgin Chris Hannon, Wakefield Theatre Royal’s resident pantomime dame, no less. Fabulous casting: he’s just right for hot-head Ralph/sexy Suzy.

Bouncers should be “like watching four stand-up comedians”, reckons Godber, and Hannon and his fellow doormen of the apocalypse are certainly that.

Men in DJs once made you think of the Rat Pack at the Sands Hotel. Godber changed all that, and Bouncers will keep on bouncing back as long as Friday and Saturday still finish with a ‘y’ and a police siren.

Bouncers, John Godber Company/Wakefield Theatre Royal, on tour at Hull Truck Theatre until February 15, 7.45pm and 2pm next Saturday; CAST, Doncaster, February 27 to March 1, 7.30pm and 4pm, March 1. Box office: Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Doncaster, 01302 303959.