FEW can reduce a full house to stitches like the maestro, Alan Ayckbourn.

So deafening was the laughter that the cast had to (seamlessly) pause at times, allowing for a particularly quick punchline to sink in, and for the audience to regain their composure, before carrying on with the barmy charade at the heart of Ayckbourn’s hair-trigger farce.

The classic comedy of misunderstandings follows Greg, who is hopelessly infatuated with free-spirited Ginny. They have only known each other for a month but he has already made up his mind that she’s the girl for him. When she tells him that she’s going to visit her parents, he decides this is the moment to ask her father for his daughter’s hand.

Discovering a scribbled address, he follows her to Buckinghamshire where he finds Philip and Sheila enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning breakfast in the garden. The only thing is - they’re not Ginny’s parents, and Philip is in fact her former – yet still rather clingy – lover.

Blissful mayhem and head-scratching confusion ensue as each character keeps up the pretence, side-stepping the truth, without ever uttering a bare-faced lie (except perhaps model hostess Sheila whose sense of decorum prevents her from prying or seeming to scratching below the surface of the growing web of deception).

In this subtle game of deceit, nothing is as crystal clear as it appears and we embark on a riotous adventure as characters walk the narrow line between deceiver and deceived.

Robert Powell is masterly as cantankerous Philip, a fifty-something philanderer who can’t quite seem to let his former mistress go. His flair for comedy is a joy to behold. Nuanced and measured, he avoids all the pitfalls of farce, never once giving in to caricature. He comes into his own as he is forced to play along with Ginny’s travesty of a happy family to maintain his own cover.

As for Antony Eden, he paints a hilarious and surprisingly touching picture of hapless Greg. Love truly is blind in his case and his uncanny ability to put his foot in it and exacerbate tensions keeps the play ticking along.

In this four-hander each actor carries the plot flawlessly, but Liza Goddard is the stand-out star. Initially dismissed as a dim, gullible housewife, wholly absorbed in polite chitchat about the weather, she gradually reveals that she is not unaware of the simmering maelstrom under the surface. In fact she speaks some of Ayckbourn’s wittiest, most incisive lines behind a straight-faced naivety.

Relatively Speaking is a rare, tightly-crafted gem, which still feels refreshingly modern and ticks all the right boxes five decades on. We doff our hats to Ayckbourn.

Relatively Speaking runs at the Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday 3.