If you’ve done your homework and you think the answer to the ‘ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything’ is 42, you’d be wrong. You’ve read the wrong book. The actual meaning of life is not to be found in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but in Michael Frayn’s farcical masterpiece, Noises Off: sardines. The answer is always sardines.

Or so thinks Lloyd Dallas (Simon Burke), the Cambridge-educated director, reduced to intellectual rubble and close to a coronary thanks to his efforts to coax a middle-aged, scatter-brained actress – named Dotty no less – to remember her props and exits. ‘Doors and sardines,’ Lloyd explains, airing his exasperation. ‘Getting on – getting off. Getting the sardines on – getting sardines off. That’s farce. That’s theatre. That’s life.’