As exclusively revealed last week, the director and set designer of the original 1975 production of this Michael Frayn play descended on the cuttings library of this very newspaper for research purposes.

The chaos and litter they obviously found has been resuscitated beautifully decades later on the Playhouse stage — one of the busiest and most eye-catching sets I have seen.

Whether the uniformly excellent cast accurately represent the staff at The Oxford Times in those distant days is not for me to say, but the answer is probably ‘yes’. Any gathering of journalists and newspaper people is likely to offer up the archetypes spotted by Frayn: the world-weary aesthete (Albert, excellently played by Gawn Grainger), the young buck reporter John (enthusiastic but vague in the hands of Jonathan Guy Lewis), the well-meaning but dufferish sports writer, aptly named Wally (Michael Garner) and the sparky new broom junior librarian (a very poised performance as Lesley by Chloe Newsome).

Above all, there is Lucy, who runs the library, loves her work, loves everyone she works with and is the warm heart at the core of the play. Imogen Stubbs, pictured, plays her wonderfully well. Alphabetical Order came before Frayn’s comic masterpiece Noises Off and he is more interested here in zippy wordplay and situation development than audience belly laughs.

But the packed first night audience was clearly highly entertained throughout as the play moved from cosy beginnings to its predictably bleaker end.

What had been comfortable chaos is transformed by Lesley into cold austerity (the set transformation at the start of act two is spectacular to behold and received its very own burst of applause).

Michael Frayn was remarkably prescient 34 years ago. He cannot have foreseen the changes the coming of the digital age has brought and he wrote this play at a time when the reading of a daily provincial paper was a regular fixture in the lives of millions.

But that world is now disappearing and the emotions he gives his characters as their beloved newspaper folds are doubtless being repeated up and down the country today.