Just when you think Alan Ayckbourn simply can't get any better, he does. I suspect theatrical historians of the future will rate his new play, Earth Angel, as one of his very best.

At 86, with 90 plays to his credit, he is still being as inventive and critical as ever. This time he has the internet firmly in sights, and how it is full of lunatics all haplessly reaching out to each other. But he craftily conceals his hand for quite a while.

We are in a modern-ish estate house where mourners are returning from the funeral of Amy, a popular 50s-something teacher who the vicar has described as an Earth Angel. He probably doesn't realise he has borrowed that description from the title of a 1954 hit record by The Penguins.

But Daniel knows. In fact Daniel knows a lot of things, whereas nobody knows anything about Daniel. And he's certainly not telling.

Why is he at the funeral? Did he know Amy? Is he a compulsive funeral hopper? What's his game?

Suspicions are aroused. With recourse to the internet, conspiracy theories about him soar away. Suspicion reaches fever pitch. Is he a person of interest? Maybe he's a murderer. Stupid people say ridiculous things... and we laugh at them heartily.

There is a compassionate and hopeful side to the play too. Daniel and widower Gerald form a firm friendship. There is trust and understanding at a time of great loss. And it's the collision between these two elements of the play which make it such a memorable one.

Ayckbourn's post-funeral dialogue is beautifully observed. He gives his characters such immaculate small talk. Bereft of meaningful things to say, they dive deep in to inconsequentialities and, still bereft, they repeat them. The task of washing up becomes a big deal and Elizabeth Boag as the marigold-wearing Norah Tussock (with a character name like that you know she's going to be funny) is brilliant at the kitchen sink. Sanguinely, Gerald describes her as “entertaining - the first time round”. Boag takes that as her template and adds a dash of Victoria Wood.

The still, calm centre of the play is a superb performance from Russell Richardson as the dignified, grieving, Head of English, husband. Ayckbourn uses him to have a dig at computers in the classroom and Gilbert and Sullivan, but otherwise paints a portrait of a perfectly rational, mindful man, seeing the best in people and coping as best he can. Richardson's first scene sees him sitting stock still on his own in semi-darkness, just thinking. And he continues to impress.

When the comedy cavalry arrives, Hayden Wood is the vanguard. His characterisation of an internet nerd is as annoying as it is hilarious. He is a man in a techno-bubble with “his tablet, his phone and his followers”. Here is the worst kind of internet junkie, someone who believes everything he reads and fantasises away.   

Worse is to follow. Gerald's fierce sister Maxine (Lisa Goddard) is a former magistrate who reckons most of her cases should have been taken out and shot. Her paranoid policeman husband, Adrian (Stuart Fox), is of much the same opinion and stokes up the suspicion. It's a treat to see Goddard back in an Ayckbourn play. Her character Maxine has the best laugh lines about “the way the world is going” and she delivers them with arrow-like precision.

As for Iskandar Eaton's, Daniel - he really is a man of mystery. Eaton handles the nonentity of the character beautifully, being enigmatic and non-committal as he drops Ayckbourn's red herrings, dubious clues and false trails with detached innocence. His final scene with Richardson is quite heartbreaking as the play reaches it's surprising and devastating conclusion.
After so many decades in the business, Ayckbourn knows his audience so well he can play with us mercilessly. I challenge anyone to see the twist coming.

I shall now post this review and wait for the conspiracy theories about it to emerge.

Five stars

Reviewed by Chris Eldon Lee at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme on Wednesday 15 November. Earth Angel continues to show at the venue until Saturday 25 October.