If you hear a moaning sound outside the Theatre Royal, it is Noel Coward groaning in his grave.

I groaned in sympathy with him as I sat through what is one of his greatest plays, written in four days in 1930.

This comedy of a divorced couple, who bump into each other on their respective second honeymoons with new partners and find their original love rekindled, should have been a triumph, but not on this occasion.

The show looks good and has a stunning act one set. The players are elegantly dressed and the script is as sparkling as anything Noel Coward wrote, full of classic, witty one-liners.

Belinda Lang, from television's 2.4 Children, and Julian Wadham are the older divorcees and Zoe Traves and Robert Portal are their younger new spouses. The show marks the directorial debut of the excellent actor David Haig, last seen in Brighton as Rudyard Kipling in My Boy Jack.

So why did Coward's sparkling piece leave me groaning?

The author's lines are delivered in a manner, which is, quite frankly, awful.

Above all, Coward's scripts call for superb timing and crisp and clear delivery. Here, with the possible exception of Ms Traves, the delivery was muddled, frequently murmured and often spoken in suburban accents a far cry from the posh hotels these characters would have inhabited.

On until Saturday, January 28