Theatregoers wishing to see work presented as its creator intended will generally be reassured when a programme advises that the writer and director are one and the same person.

Thus it is with the rib-tickling new show at The Mill at Sonning dinner theatre, which sees the veteran farceur Ray Cooney – 87 not out – returning to take charge of Run for Your Wife.

A leading figure in what must be considered the golden age of British comedy, he took leading roles in Brian Rix’s Whitehall farces before branching out as a playwright with two of the most famous of them, One for the Pot and Chase Me Comrade.

Run for Your Wife, a classic study of marital infidelity, was a huge hit during the 1980s, enjoying an eight-year run in the West End.

It has been seen around the world ever since, enjoying acclaim which was not – sad to say – accorded to the 2012 screen version. “Funny as leprosy,” wrote one critic; others called it “the worst British film ever”.

The Mill’s revival sets the action firmly in the period of the play’s creation, which is understandable on two counts.

First, the plot necessarily requires us to be in a pre-mobile phone era for the deception at its centre to be in any degree credible.

And secondly, attempts at updating would expose the antediluvian nature of some of the humour – including the oft-paraded notion that homosexuality, whether practised or proclaimed, is in itself funny.

Multiple misunderstandings on view include the idea that the play’s central character is himself gay, which is hardly likely since he has two wives (always female, remember, in those days).

The bigamy of taxi driver John Smith (Nick Wilton) supplies the mainspring of the plot, his life divided between Mary (Michelle Morris) in Wimbledon and Barbara (Judy Buxton) in nearby Streatham.

Both zones of operation are presented in Jackie Dougan’s versatile set, one superimposed, as it were, upon the other, with characters moving about oblivious at times to activities around them. This is a clever style of staging that one has come to associate, of course, with Alan Ayckbourn.

Trouble begins for John Smith when he is the victim of an assault – literally a hand-bagging. The two addresses he inadvertently supplies for hospital records risk exposing his double life.

His Wimbledon neighbour Stanley Gardner (Jeffrey Holland) is early recruited to the rescue operation, becoming mired in deceptions himself as a consequence.

The long arm of the law is soon involved too. Uniformed Sergeant Troughton (Elizabeth Elvin) and CID man D.S. Porterhouse (David Warwick) are properly led up the garden path as inquiries begin.

Then Barbara’s Streatham neighbour, a camp Welsh dressmaker called Bobby (Delme Thomas), prances in to contribute to the well-managed, well-acted mayhem.

Until November 23. Box office: 0118 969 8000, millatsonning.com 4/5