THIS was the first play that Alan Ayckbourn wrote for the National Theatre at the request of Peter Hall in 1975.

Ayckbourn, Hall, National Theatre, it all adds up to a landmark play in a career that now runs to well beyond 70 titles.

The title should not be taken at face value. Bedroom Farce does the have the structure of a farce, three beds, four couples and am plethora of pyjamas – and was inspired by Ayckbourn’s love of the work of Feydeau and Ben Travers – but it is more of a bedroom tragic-comedy.

In a nutshell, farcical situations arise from real people facing real predicaments. There is no dropping of trousers and the torrid pattern of sleep deprivation is not the result of wild bed-hopping but the disturbances inflicted by the self-obsessed, somewhat strange Trevor (Antony Eden) and Susannah (Laura Doddington).

They are the restless interlopers in Ayckbourn’s long night’s journey into day, spreading their neurotic problems through the suburban bedrooms of three other couples, while never being seen in their own home.

In the wake of their tornado, they open up cracks in the relationships of Trevor’s ultra middle-class, ultra-conservative parents Delia (Lynette Edwards) and Ernest (Chris Wilkinson); and Trevor’s former flame Jan (Maeve Larkin) and her self-pitying grumpy husband Nick (Robin Simpson), who has been consigned to bed with a spinal injury.

Couple number three, unkempt newly weds Malcolm (Harry Devas) and Kate (Catherine Kinsella), like to play pranks on each other, but inviting the blithely destructive Trevor and Susannah to their house-warming party is no laughing matter.

One-time Ayckbourn repertory actor turned director Robin Herford sets the action “some 20 year ago, before the mobile phone arrived to make our lives so much simpler…or not”. His production is a period piece in its detail but the behavioural patterns and themes carry no dateline, as familiar today as they would have been in the Seventies.

Designer Michael Holt has placed the bedrooms of the three separate houses on different levels, so the viewer can take in all three at once at all times, with the aid of Jane Burrek’s lighting picking out the bedroom in focus for each scene. This facilitates the easy flow of Herford’s show, particularly when the pace of Trevor and Susannah’s havoc picks up post-interval.

Herford has cast sublimely well: Ayckbourn favourite Doddington is as wonderful as ever as screwed-up Susannah; Eden’s Trevor makes great company for the audience but is exhausting and exasperating for anyone who comes into contact with him.

Simpson’s grouch amuses too, especially in his sparring with Larkin’s unsympathetic, freer-spirited Jan; Kinsella and Devas capture immature young loves learning life’s disappointments on the hoof; and Edwards and Wilkinson convey such a very English couple in such a very English way. They make eating pilchards in bed after a disappointing anniversary dinner at their once-a-year regular restaurant look so appealing.

Appropriately, Herford’s production has plenty of bite too, just right for a play with bleakness at its core.

Bedroom Farce, Harrogate Theatre/Oldham Coliseum, at Harrogate Theatre, until Saturday. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk