Dimly aware as a non-telly viewer of Stephen Tompkinson's eminence in the area of TV drama, I was impressed to see how adept he proves in what must be for him the comparatively neglected field of stage performance. His Lord Fancourt Babberley - the aristocratic impersonator of his friend Charles Wykeham's absent aunt - is one of the funniest I have seen, including that of Mel Smith, the director of this sparkling revival which can be seen until tomorrow at Milton Keynes Theatre (and next week in Richmond).

Mr Smith's own familiarity with the play no doubt goes some way to explain the near-perfection of this production, in which no trick is missed in extracting every last laugh from Brandon Thomas's familiar script. Important, too, must have been his knowlege of the ways of Oxford - although his experiences at New College in the 1970s would have been significantly different from those of undergraduates we meet at St Olde's (loosely based on Pembroke) 70 years earlier.

David Partridge and Nicholas Clayton give us a prize pair of silly asses in Jack Chesney and Wykeham - just as well they have the savvy scout Brassett (Michael Melia) to look out for them. In love, respectively, with Kitty Verdun (Emily Pennant-Rea) and Amy Spettigue (Tatina de Marinis), they will achieve happiness only by overcoming the opposition of the fierce solicitor Stephen Spettigue (the excellent Richard Syms), who is guardian to the first and uncle to the second.

Finding opportunity to pop the question is a problem, though, in an Oxford where the two sexes cannot meet unchaperoned. How fortunate, then, that Charley's long-absent millionairess aunt, Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez (Marty Cruickshank), is making a first visit to her nephew. Then. when she is delayed, how luckly, too, that 'Babs' has just taken up amateur theatricals . . .