Lady Margaret Hall’s Simpkins-Lee Theatre struck me on first sight — and indeed on second and third sights too — as a cross between a crematorium and a cinema. This makes it an appropriate setting for a revival of Terry Johnson’s 1994 hit Dead Funny.

As its title deftly suggests, the play is concerned both with death and entertainment. It is very funny, very sad and often very hard to watch.

The short distance separating audience and performers means that sometimes we feel uncomfortably like voyeurs — as when eager-for-a-baby Eleanor (Charlotte Mulliner) tries to fire up the flagging libido of her obstetrician husband Richard (Jordan Waller) in a few-holds-barred grapple in their underwear inches from our eyes.

Later on, as their marriage and that of their neighbours — Cockney teacher Nick (Will Hatcher) and baby-obsessed mum Lisa (Lauren Hyett) — start to unravel in scenes of painful revelation and reproach, we can hardly fail to feel like trespassers into private grief.

The framework to the drama is supplied in the activities of the Dead Funny Society which, under Richard’s presidency, celebrates classic British comedy (well-chosen examples of which punctuate the action). Nick and Lisa are enthusiastic members, as is another neighbour, gay northerner Brian (Lloyd Houston). Eleanor views their activities with undisguised contempt.

The action builds towards its shattering climax at a disastrous club meeting planned as a tribute to the recently deceased Benny Hill. It is axiomatic that any custard pie or trifle brought on stage during a theatrical performance will end in someone’s face, but it is astonishing to see that the ones supplied here by caterer Brian are deployed to tragic and not comic effect.

This admirably acted production, under director Chloe Wicks, has been entered into next year’s International Student Drama Festival in Sheffield where it can only add further lustre to Oxford’s reputation for theatre.

Meanwhile it can be seen at the Simpkins-Lee Theatre until Saturday.