Hugh Whitemore’s Pack of Lies is playing to full houses at Milton Keynes Theatre this week, its popularity no doubt explained by the presence in the cast of telly favourites Simon (Peak Practice) Shepherd and Jenny Seagrove, not to mention a star turn from Lorna Luft, the daughter of the legendary Judy Garland.

Based on a real-life spy story of the early 1960s, the play brings a new dimension to a familiar genre by demonstrating that espionage, and the breaches of trust it necessarily involves, can impact not only in the corridors of Whitehall and the courtyards of Cambridge but on lives led far away from these spheres of influence.

Lives could scarcely be more ordinary than those of Bob and Barbara Jackson (Shepherd and Seagrove) and their teenage daughter Julie (Corinne Sawers) at their suburban semi in Ruislip. Beautifully recreated in Julie Godfrey’s designs, the house will inspire a warm glow of nostalgia from all who were alive in 1960. The hall, with its hatstand and stained-glass panels, simply cries out for the presence of a brolly-wielding paterfamilias with his cheery call of “Darling, I’m home!”.

Whitemore and director Christopher Morahan resist the temptation to supply this — just. However, there is more than a flavour of a television sit-com about the piece, which began life as a TV play (since expanded) in 1971. One suspects that in their attempt to depict ‘real life’, these experienced men of the theatre were aware of the curious process by which television at once inspires and reflects the modes of behaviour of its viewers.

The one unusual feature of the Jacksons’ life is their friendship with a Transatlantic couple who moved in some years before to the house opposite. Peter (Robert Slade) is quiet and bookish — indeed, he deals in rare books — while his wife Helen (Lorna Luft), by contrast, is loud and vulgar — the sort of woman, with her pushiness, nosiness and irritating self-confidence, designed to give Americans a bad name. Actually, this pair claims to be Canadian — just one part of the ‘pack of lies’ they have been telling since they reached Britain.

In fact, they are Communist spies whose activities opposite are soon being monitored from Julie’s bedroom by a pair of appealing young agents (Emma Kearney and Rebecca McQuillan) sent by MI5 agent Stewart (Daniel Hill), an unflappable, smooth-talking stiff-upper-lip type, who might have stepped from any number of Francis Durbridge television thrillers of the period.

The irony, of course, is that the lying becomes a two-way affair as the surveillance proceeds, with the good-sort Barbara mortified by the pretences she is forced to practise on people she continues loyally to regard as her friends.

Thus do ‘ordinary people’ suffer as a consequence of the clashes of ideology that divide states.

Until Saturday, 0870 060 6652 (www.ambassadortickets.com/milton keynes)