Surely no British director has as inexhaustible an arsenal of comic ideas and techniques as Sean Foley. His years of performing in duo The Right Size have left him with not just a bulging dossier of moves, looks, suggestions and so on, but also an innate understanding of the craft of comedy, in particular that it needs to be taken seriously by actors and characters alike.

Well, perhaps not always by characters in the case of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. Here, it’s not just romantic-comedy star Gary Essendine who enjoys going large, but at various moments virtually everyone he shares a stage with launches into conscious self-parody. In Foley’s Chichester revival Essendine’s scene with his producer’s wife, which goes beyond flirtation into “provocative skirmishing”, is a delight, with both playing on several levels at once. But neither is being trivial about the matter, and in particular neither Rufus Hound nor Lucy Briggs-Owen is.

Hound has made the transition from stand-up comedian to comic actor with flair and assurance, and playing Essendine for Foley is his deftest display yet of his gift for being playful without toying with his material or the audience. This is Essendine taking the mickey out of himself, not Hound caricaturing a 1940s thesp.

As a succession of annoying visitors and too-determined lovers are squirreled away offstage in Essendine’s spare room or office, the cast also prove themselves committed and crisp in the business of farce. Even a clutch of soda-siphon gags come off as fresh. I caught a distinct Right Size echo when young Daphne flung herself in romantic despair full-length on to the settee, only to bounce off it and land flat-out on the carpet. And at a couple of moments on press night Tracy-Ann Oberman as Essendine’s unflappable secretary was herself flapped into giggles by Hound... yet all without either of them breaking the crucial illusion of sincerity.

Present Laughter is a play I have always been fond of, but have never quite seen its combination of humour and accusation, silliness and insight – like Hound’s absurdly wagging finger of admonition – come off in performance. Now I have.

Written for the Financial Times.