Until Saturday May 19, Theatre Royal Bath.

The love affair with all things 1970s - as evidenced by the popularity of the Life On Mars - continues with the resurrection of two Alan Bennett comedies first screened nearly 30 years ago.

National treasure Patricia Routledge takes the leading roles in both A Visit From Miss Prothero and Green Forms to make up a double bill called Office Suite.

Both pieces summon a bygone age of dusty offices, forms and ledgers, typing pools and Kafka-esque complexity and inefficiency.

A Visit From Miss Prothero is a two-hander, with Edward Petherbridge as gentle, silver-haired widower Mr Dodsworth - recently retired manager of Warburtons.

Mr Dodsworth has taken up pottery and Cordon Bleu cookery and is happily leaving the world of work behind - and resents Miss Prothero's efforts to engage him in office gossip and news on the latest goings-on. All this changes, however, when we learn her real intention and Miss Prothero takes a real delight in explaining how Dodsworth's young replacement has undone his years of work in the name of efficiency.

Petherbridge was marvellous as Mr Dodsworth, constrained by convention and good manners when plainly he wants to throttle his smug visitor, then utterly broken by the realisation his years of work have been swept away. Routledge was on top form, delivering her barbed comments with impeccable timing.

In Green Forms, two lazy office workers spend their days gossiping and reading the paper. But amiable Doreen (Routledge) and sharp-tongued Doris (Janet Dale) are in for a shock when they piece together the evidence in their multitudinous forms and realise their comfortable existence is under threat. Again Bennett's wry, melancholy humour shines through the dialogue between the two women, entirely caught up in the concerns of their limited working world, though the piece drags on a little and would have benefited from some pruning.

The sets for both plays are created in loving detail - Mr Dodsworth's faded middle England living room, complete with canteen of cutlery, budgie and record player, and then Doris and Doreen's run-down office, with its mountains of box files, broken blinds and grubby filing cabinets.

Bennett's compassion for the pains and aspirations of ordinary people leading ordinary lives, and his talent for conveying the minutiae of everyday life, give his work an entirely timeless appeal.

Benjamin Parkes