Cruising tells the story of Maureen, a widow in her early seventies who joins a introductions agency for senior citizens and goes on a series of dates in her search for a new partner, and tells the audience about the fairly substantial number of men that she has met in this way. We also meet her friend Margaret, 76, who during the course of the play, meets and marries Geoff, 80.

In general, the elderly tend to be widely ignored as the subjects of drama in Britain - perhaps unwitting victims of the write-what-you-know school coupled with the overwhelming predominance of young writers schemes in our main new-writing venues. For this reason alone, Cruising makes another strong case for the continued experiment that is verbatim theatre. The support from the Bush - the archetypal Writers’ Theatre - is a sure sign that as a theatrical form, it is rapidly becoming accepted as a valid way of making work.

Recorded Delivery’s method is the most explicit use of verbatim theatre on the British stage. Rather than simply transcribing interviews and having actors learn the words of others, the company records the subjects, edits the material together into its staged form and then performs the material with the original tapes being played on headphones into the actors’ ears while they are performing. This technique was pioneered in New York as a means of helping actors in verbatim plays capture their subjects’ inflections more accurately - but was never used on stage. What Recorded Delivery do, by bringing the minidisc players on stage, is foreground both the truth in what they are saying and its artificiality, making the audience directly aware of the process

There is still discomfiture in some theatrical circles about the existence of verbatim theatre, with many writers complaining that its works do not count as ‘proper plays.’ For all that, Cruising is a well structured, fascinating, funny and touching story - irrespective of whether it is made up, entirely true, or fragments of truth edited into a more coherent entity. As well as delivering a satisfying plot, a fascinating cast of characters and genuine moments of joy and pathos, the play also opens of a valuable debate about the place of senior citizens in modern Britain - comprehensively blowing apart the notion that they are so many generations of prudes and bores. Matthew Dunster’s direction is well suited to the script, offering seamless movement from scene to scene - suggested only by minimal props and subtle changes in lighting - while the excellent five-strong cast slips effortlessly between multiple roles. Miranda Hart, as Maureen is particularly successful at capturing the mannerisms of her subject, without lapsing into ‘old-person-acting’.

Given that the play deals almost exclusively with older characters, the decision to have all parts played by a cast in their thirties does seem a little strange. Granted, along with the visible minidisc players, this can be seen as another example of the company’s commitment to foregrounding their theatricality, but in this context, it makes an unintended point about not allowing older people’s voices to be heard. Charles Spencer in his review for the Telegraph, for example, expressed concern that the company could have been laughing at their subjects, rather than with them.

In fact, Cruising is, at times, more shocking - certainly more surprising - than anything seen at the Royal Court in a very long time. At one point Peter, 68, discussing a woman he was sleeping with, confides: ‘I used to turn her inside out… She was hot, she was a nympho. It got to the stage fairly quickly where I just was totally unable to perform any form of satisfaction myself - this was even with the Viagra - so it was a quick trip to Ann Summers. I got a fairly hefty sized dildo and a few appropriate creams and finished her off that way. The effect was such - and you’ll have to pardon this one - that we had to have a bath towel underneath her… she used to flood the place’.

One simply doesn’t expect this sort of thing from those traditionally positioned as war-remembering suppliers of endless Werther’s Originals. Indeed, Cruising should be made compulsory reading for anyone who still harbours such notions of those of retirement age.

Till 1 July 2006.