Experiences from a lifetime in theatre were fashioned into fiction by Noël Coward in his 1951 short story Star Quality. It placed centre-stage a pampered, petulant and utterly charismatic actress with a more than passing resemblance to the Master’s regular co-star Gertrude Lawrence. Coward turned the story into a play in 1967 but this was deemed “too esoteric” by Binkie Beaumont, the most influential producer of the day. The play was shelved, never to be seen until many years after Coward’s death in a West End production with a script adapted by Christopher Luscombe. It is this version that tours this week to Oxford Playhouse (until Saturday).

How extensive Luscombe’s adaptation was is unclear to this reviewer, but there can be no doubt that the result — as interpreted by a first-class cast under director Joe Harmston — is a cracking two hours of fun.

Older members of the audience will view with warm nostalgia its presentation of a theatrical scene very different from today’s, while perhaps recognising that some of the people involved in it have survived unchanged in type into the 21st century.

And what types they are! — a rich gallery of all involved in the production of a big-budget play (except, oddly, any Beaumont-like producer figure). We hear and see enough of Dark Heritage to recognise that it is a cheesy and sentimental romance, though its creator, the appealing tyro playwright Bryan Snow (Bob Saul), naturally takes a different view. So does its likely star Lorraine Barrie (Liza Goddard), whose hilarious over-estimation of the play’s literary worth is typical of an actress for whom there are never half measures.

Her acceptance of the role settled, there follow entertaining ructions as she fights to get her way over every aspect of the production, with its director Ray Malcolm (Daniel Casey) — smoothly manipulative but with a core of steel — out to thwart her when he can. A particular bone of contention arises over the casting of a part lower down the pecking order. The imperious Miss Barrie wants her mate Marion Blake (Sarah Berger), but whether this truly dreadful ham will survive in the part into the West End is far from certain.

Other relishably recognisable portraits come in the unflappable, pipe-sucking and comically useless leading man Gerald Wentworth (Keith Myers) and Miss Barrie’s utterly loyal “seen-everything-dear” maid-cum-dresser Nora Mitchell (Su Douglas).

Waspish wit of the style associated with Coward is best supplied in the character of director Ray’s camp assistant and boyfriend, Tony Orford (Anthony Houghton). His dismissal of someone as being “all gong and no dinner” is an insult I shall long cherish.

Box office: 01865 305305 (www.oxfordplayhouse.com).