After all, Walter Matthau's hang-dog face and signature slouch were perfect for Oscar Madison, "divorced, broke and sloppy", who ends up giving houseroom to the infuriatingly fastidious Felix Ungar, equally perfectly nailed by a nervy Jack Lemmon.

Inverness amateur company The Florians recognised that the Matthau/Lemon double act would linger in the mind and introduced the action with Neal Hefti's catchy theme — after all, ignoring it would be like remaking "Shaft" without a blast of Issac Hayes.

Unlike the professional version which toured Scotland a decade or so ago with Gerard Kelly as Felix and Craig Ferguson and Andy Gray as Oscar, they opted to stick to the New York setting and US accents, though some of Oscar's poker buddies struggled with the American idiom, an honourable exception Alan Holling's Murray the Cop — played like a slightly more punch drunk Brando from "On the Waterfront".

For Oscar, with his sharp cynical wit, only a New York accent would do. But Nicholas Nicol's decision to play Felix with a fussy Southern twang, like Truman Capote on less helium, suited the angst-ridden character.

The decision to cast real-life brothers Nicholas and Trevor Nicol as Felix and Oscar proved an astute move by director James Pringle, as they brought with them a natural chemistry that gave an added spark to Neil Simon's snappy dialogue and perfectly pitched one-liners, with the Nicols proving a far funnier sibling act than the brothers Chuckle or Winters ever did.

The comedy was not just in the words, though, and the principals also handled the more physical gags well, while Nicholas in particular has a gift for a chortle-inducing expression.

Jenni Lomax and Biddy MacBean also gave good comedy support as the couple's saucy neighbours, the Pigeon sisters, but it was the central pairing, combined with that script, which ensured that the laughs kept coming.

CM

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