Frankie & Johnny is surely more relevant today than it was in the 1980s: there are legions of 40-somethings trapped in city apartment blocks fighting their better sense to date again.

Not that director Paulette Randall has had to update Terrence McNally’s off-Broadway hit first staged in 1987.

It’s perfectly paced, the lines whizz, and in the hands of Chichester favourite Dervla Kirwan and Neil Stuke, who is so good it’s hard to even picture him as Matthew from Game On, it fires and crackles and teases and touches.

We meet Manhattan waitress Frankie (Kirwan) and wise-cracking short-order cook Johnny (Stuke) rolling around in bed in her lonely New York studio. There’s Budweiser on the side and a stove ready for Johnny to rustle up Frankie’s favourite post-coital snack.

Over the next two hours their burgeoning backwards and forwards love affair unravels in real time, which adds to the feeling we’ve been parachuted in without the pair knowing.

The actors’ easy chemistry makes it credible and natural, as Johnny’s bravado slips away to reveal a wounded tiger and Frankie doesn’t seem to like herself enough to let love in.