Christopher Gray reviewed this play when it passed through Milton Keynes and I talked to its author, Sir Ronald Harwood, for these pages a fortnight ago. So readers are possibly familiar with the plot, subtle but gossamer thin: three elderly opera singers inhabiting a rest home for bewildered musicians prepare to celebrate Verdi’s birthday at a gala show when the fourth member from their famous youth appears.

Will Jean (Susannah York) sing with them? Will she H**l! Had she ever been married to either Wilfred (Timothy West, right) or Reginald (Michael Jayston)? Well, I’ll be blowed, yes. Might she share intimate secrets from the past with Cissy (Gwen Taylor)? Hang on, she might.

There have been better plays written about the process of ageing, but in the hands of these four actors, there is a real poignancy that shone through and delighted the first-night Playhouse audience. Reginald looks forward to “a dignified and tranquil senility”. But Wilfred? “I’ve hated it — hated growing old.” Cissy has no idea she’s the subject of Wilfred’s still lustful thoughts and believes everyone is recently returned from Karachi, Krishnapur or Budleigh Salterton.

And Jean? She has the most to account for and reveal — and as someone who fell for her in the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? all those years ago, to see Susannah York gobbling up the stage was a delight.

I was lucky enough to bump into Jayston outside the theatre afterwards, and he vouchsafed his part was one of the most technical he has taken on. He knows how to hold an audience with cleverly judged restraint. Gwen Taylor, a leading TV actress, embraces her role in a most Joan Sims-like fashion and Timothy West merely maintains his position at the top of the British acting firmament: I believe there is no other performer in his mid-seventies who can put three pairs of socks down the front of his trousers with such aplomb.

If you’re going, enjoy the final scene. Or not. I did.