Rattigan's ear for the strained jollity of slang is unerring, but just as touching is the way physical gestures are most constrained at times of greatest pathos. Harry Hadden-Paton as Teddy gives a riveting performance as a man whose pride and stiff upper lip would probably now be diagnosed as early post-traumatic stress disorder.

As the cor blimey countess, Sheridan Smith is bewitching: funny and self-deprecating, even in her coded anxiety that her relationship will not outlast the war.

And yes, I admit it:  Miller is not half bad as the uptight English wife in the grip of an unsuitable passion, clutching elegantly at a cigarette as she learns, like Bogart in Casablanca, that our bonfires of the heart are not worth a hill of beans when the crazy world is in flames.

This tender archaeology of the human heart shows Rattigan at his best and Trevor Nunn's assured and empathetic direction is fitting tribute to a master.

It falls far short of his well-made plays at their best. Even a classy performance by Tommy McDonnell as the wily barrister and a luminous Anne-Marie Duff can't make up for the shortcomings of a piece over-stuffed with themes and obsessions which work so well latently in Rattigan, but come across as a bit shouty and parodic as he gives them a last hurrah.

Interwoven with the court case of Alma Rattenbury, accused with her lover of the murder of her doddery husband, is the complex inner life of a juror, the uptight   Edith Davenport (Niamh Cusack), whose feelings about Alma channel her own frigidity and anxiety about her son's burgeoning sexuality.

This must be the gayest play ever written about a straight ménage à trois, which is why it doesn't quite ring true. Alma's guilt about the seduction and preoccupation with who has the power balance in a relationship between lovers of different ages sounds more like the homosexual Rattigan chewing over the emotional involvements and compromises of his youth.

Duff is glorious as a sensual, self-absorbed hysteric, realising the enormity of her situation and proximity to the death penalty, but despite Sharrock's nifty direction, the whole enterprise feels stilted. By the time the tragic denouement arrives, we've come to regard the characters as mouthpieces and the horror of capital punishment has dwindled into a vague will-they-won't-they-cop-it curiosity.