The Last Cigarette **** TNT

Monday 11 May 2009 09:35 GMT

Author, diarist and playwright Simon Gray is no longer with us, but there’s a trio of identically clad reincarnations of him to be seen in this smoke-free adaptation (co-written with his long-term friend and fellow dramatist Hugh Whitemore) of the journals he kept whilst smoking himself into the grave.

There's considerable sadness underlying the humour - his beloved younger brother drank himself to a premature death at the age of 49 and too many of his contemporaries have found out from bitter experience the ravages that a diagnosis of cancer can precede. But the overriding impression is of the wit and self-knowledge of a man who couldn’t be persuaded to give up the 60-a-day habit he’d indulged in for half a century.

Dressed in white vests, loose blue shirts and chinos, the three actors share Gray’s words between them, as well as slipping briefly into the other characters who populate his memoirs – Felicity Kendall as his supportive second wife Victoria, Nicholas Le Prevost as a toothy chipmunk of a specialist who tells them the news they don't want to hear as well as some that they do, and Jasper Britton as close friend Harold Pinter.

The spectre of the "grim man holding a knife" and waiting to murder him in his own home hangs over the proceedings, but Richard Eyre’s fluid production ends on an upbeat note – ironically, it wasn't the spreading cancer that eventually got him but an aneurysm. And, though lacking the spleen of his most acerbic, earlier writing, this affectionate rendition of his reminiscences, transfers surprisingly well to the stage.

Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY (0870 060 6632; ambassadortickets.com). Until Aug 1. £25-£55