This is nearly a good play. It falls at the last because of the jargon and focus group feel of the second half – a well meaning but now past-it take on working life. It would undoubtedly have been more meaningful and clever two decades ago, when Alan Ayckbourn originally commissioned the drama from writer Tim Firth. Now, despite quality acting from Stephen Tompkinson and Tom Shaw, there is a ‘tell me something I didn’t know already’ feel about the piece.

The premise is straightforward: Tompkinson is Frank, the long-time neon-sign mounter, and Shaw plays Alan, a work experience helper. The two of them spend the first half high up on a building, occasionally doing what their jobs require. Frank takes every opportunity to dictate new paragraphs for a rather naff thriller into his Dictaphone – an element in his character that actually goes nowhere other than to suggest that there is more to him than being a long-time neon sign mounter. Alan is predictably youthful and brash.

They talk a lot to each other – old pro to tyro. Frank passes on tricks of the trade and speaks of the one piece of writing he has actually had published – about moles. Alan asks him what he wants: “To be immortal. Well, not forever, but just a bit!” As the first half closes, his name is literally up in lights.

Spool forward five years. Frank comes into the office for a job reassessment, and can’t you just guess who the Trainee Assistant Deputy Manager assigned to deal with him is! Utterly hidebound by Birtite management practices, Alan talks of things like “sale-instruction windows”. In the end, there is no real winner.

Stephen Tompkinson is a very successful television actor: from Drop The Dead Donkey, via Ballykissangel to Wild At Heart, he has ticked a lot of boxes on the box. But it is good that he trusts himself in front of a live audience too, and Sign of the Times is a nice, relatively undemanding opportunity for him to show us how expertly he uses the tools of his trade. Tom Shaw, of whom I had not previously heard, holds his own very well with his starrier partner.

Until Saturday. Tickets: 01865 305305 (www.oxfordplayhouse.com).