The 1960s comedy Billy Liar still has its moments, but the dated script by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall makes a two-hour 35-minute production, including two intervals, a bit of an endurance test.

Billy Fisher, immortalised by Tom Courtenay in the film, is known as Billy Liar because of his outrageous fabrications.

But the stage version centres too much on life in the lounge of his dreary Yorkshire home and fails to capitalise on how Billy’s lies catch him out in the “real” world. We don’t even get to see his undertaker boss, played by the late, great Leonard Rossiter in the film, for example.

Opportunities are also lost to exploit some humorous situations, mainly because this production, under Michael Lunney’s staid direction, lacks pace.

Nathan Hannan excels when it comes to projecting Billy’s wild imagination, but lacks the charisma to suggest why three girls would want to marry him.

And neither he nor Lauren Drummond, who plays his orange-munching frumpish fiancée Barbara, make the most of the attempted seduction scene.

Much of the pathos is provided by Billy’s long- suffering parents. Helen Fraser, who played Barbara in the film, returns as Billy’s harassed mother and shares some dramatic exchanges with Dicken Ashworth as the bullying father.