AS THE old saying goes, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” While that might be true of your flash new smart phone or your mountain bike, the same can't be said of the arts and especially not comedy.

With few exceptions, comedy rarely ages well and Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce is definitely beginning to show its age.

No doubt wary of this fact, director Peter Hall chose to keep the play set in the 1970s when Ayckbourn originally penned it.

But after an initial wave of nostalgia for the good 'ole days when comedy was bland and inoffensive, you're left with the aching realisation that both you and the world have moved on from tittering about the banal marital worries of Middle England.

The action takes place over the course of one night in three couples' bedrooms.

Delia and Ernest (Juliet Mills and Bruce Montague) are the stereotypical cumdgeonly old couple, bed-bound Nick and frustrated wife Jan (Maxwell Caulfield and Clare Wilkie) are having trouble in the bedroom and Kate and Malcolm (Julia Mallam and Ayden Callaghan) are happy new homemakers.

When the latter pair invite Delia and Ernest's flighty son Trevor (Oliver Boot) and his hippy, emotional wreck of a wife Susannah (Natasha Alderslade) to their house-warming party, all hell breaks loose and its not long before they are ruining the marital bliss of all the couples on stage.

There are fine performances all round, with Boot and Alderslade showing a real talent for comedy and Mills exuding motherly warmth and tenderness.

However, there's a whiff of am-dram about it all, especially with a hammy turn by Caulfield as the frigid husband crippled with a bad back and Montague as the stuffy hubbie reading his wife a bedtime story.

Admittedly, Ayckbourn's humour is of a time and fans of long gone TV shows such as Ever Decreasing Circles and Butterflies will lap up Bedroom Farce as a slice of safe, risk free entertainment.

But with nothing to challenge, provoke or even make you think, you'd be better off spending the evening with your head submerged in a tub of jelly, while Bruce Forsythe dances the Lambada around your living room singing The Ketchup Song.

Bedroom Farce. The Churchill, High Street, Bromley. Until Saturday. Call 0844 871 7620 or visit ambassadortickets.com/bromley