This production is - astonishingly - Alan Ayckbourn's 70th play, and could very easily have been his last.

Within weeks of its completion, in January of last year, he suffered a stroke.

Happily, however, he made a remarkable recovery and was able to start directing the play for Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre, where his new work is always seen first.

In what now appears to have become another (very welcome) tradition, the touring version has arrived at the Playhouse - where he once worked as a young actor in rep - in time to brighten the post-festive gloom.

I must stress straight away, however, that this is a somewhat darker piece than might be expected - by those, at any rate, who associate the name of Ayckbourn only with the frothy farces that made it famous.

Of course, he has for many years been casting an unsparing eye on 'the human condition' - and here is another exercise in the same vein. His masterly analysis of the pains and pressures of typical family life provides compelling, if not always comfortable, viewing.

The setting (designer Roger Glossop) presents the kitchen, sitting room and bedroom of a comfortable home. Its owners, Mal and Jill Rodale (Terence Booth and Liza Goddard), are seen to rise from their bed - he clearly suffering from the effects of the previous night's boozing; she dispensing all the tact and understanding that it is clearly her lot in this marriage to provide.

Clad in a dressing gown that she won't get out of all day, she supervises breakfast for a teenage son (Dominic Hecht) whose thespian ambitions - he wants to be in a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream - are a mile removed from the macho preoccupations of his dad.

In the first clever device of this production, the same set now becomes Mal's place of work. He is the manager of a furniture shop. Here we follow him through his day's work of bullying staff, berating customers, and planning his evening booze-up and a lunchtime tryst with his 'bit on the side', the unseen Trixie.

This relationship is being covered up (he thinks) with the help of son-in-law and work colleague Dean (Richard Stacey). But Jill knows all about it - just as she knows about Dean's brutal treatment of her daughter Chrissie (Saskia Butler). Small wonder she's depressed.

What's needed in this household, you might think, is a bit more feminine understanding on the part of Mal. And that's exactly what it gets on the second day, when Mal and Jill wake up to find each occupying the other's body.

This is a daring device (which Ayckbourn used before in The Jollies), but it works to tremendous effect, both in terms of comedy and what it reveals about how we ought to live.

The production runs until Saturday.