THE London Repertory Players, bringing three plays to Boscombe in as many weeks, switched adroitly from thriller to comedy.

Until Tuesday, they had been playing Dial M for Murder; on Thursday, the curtain rose on their production of Neil Simon’s 1961 Broadway hit Come Blow Your Horn.

Alan Baker (Al Wadlan) is a ladies’ man who puts more effort into concocting lies to tell the women in his life than he does into working for his father’s business selling fruit made of wax. His naïve younger brother Buddy (Laurent Zhubi) plucks up the nerve to move out of the family home and into Alan’s place, with their overbearing parents in hot pursuit. Three weeks later, profound changes have taken place in both brothers.

The play may begin slowly, but it’s not long before the dialogue starts to crackle, with one beautifully honed Neil Simon one-liner closely following another. The brothers and the women in their lives (Jessica Jane and Cecily Nash) are memorably rendered, and Simon created two scene-stealing roles for the actors playing the archetypal New York Jewish parents. Mark Spalding and Barbara Dryhurst fill those parts memorably – he as the hard-grafting businessman delivering put-downs to his sons with a shrug, she as the overprotective mother reacting extravagantly to every domestic drama.

The script, with its succession of comic entrances and exits, demands perfect timing, and the company delivers it, getting big laughs from a nearly-full theatre. There were some moments when the actors “dried” on the first night, but it didn’t interrupt the rhythm of the show, and served to remind the audience of what a feat this company has taken on. You couldn’t help remembering that the actors will have had a third play – NJ Crisp’s thriller Dangerous Obsession – already in their heads as they performed this one. It should be well worth returning for.