The Argus: Brighton Festival ThumbThis 40th anniversary revival of Simon Gray’s classic is less of a play and more of an in-depth character study of its titular anti-hero, the workshy, vitriolic university lecturer Ben Butley.

As such it is very much former star of The Wire Dominic West’s show – and he proves more than capable of carrying off the whole play.

In company, Butley struts around and winds up his colleagues and loved ones, with a combination of pointed questions, playground teasing and nursery rhyme doggerel, casually throwing in great one-liners, such as his statement that he no longer has a drinking problem – “I’m used to it”.

But in Butley’s quieter moments West allows the mask to slip just a fraction, showing the lonely man behind the larger-than-life character, who apparently causes trouble just for fun.

Set during the course of a particularly bad day, the plot unfolds very slowly, heaping new miseries on to the truculent Butley’s shoulders.

At the start of the performance he’s cut his chin shaving, his wife has left him, the dullest man in Britain seems to be achieving all his secret ambitions, and his young gay protege, who he currently shares a flat and office with, is getting closer to a new boyfriend, leaving Butley alone and bored.

It is the incessant bickering between Butley and Martin Hutson’s long-suffering Joseph which forms the backbone of the performance.

But the scene which really sticks in the memory is when Butley meets his match, opposite Paul McGann’s plain-speaking Yorkshireman Reg, which almost turns into a gladiatorial combat of wits.