The Knowledge, Charing Cross Theatre, London, review: Well-acted, rather delightful production

Maureen Lipman directs her late husband Jack Rosenthal's play about would be cabbies

Steven Pacey (Burgess) and James Alexandrou (Gordon) in Maureen Lipman's production of 'The Knowledge' (Scott Rylander)

Maureen Lipman is at the steering wheel for this entertaining stage version of her late husband's classic TV play about London taxi drivers. Broadcast in 1979, The Knowledge by Jack Rosenthal focuses on a group of would-be cabbies and the ordeal they have to go through – memorising all the streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross – in order to earn the right to wear the Green Badge.

This terrifying test has not been outmoded by satnav, but Simon Block's artful adaptation wisely keeps the story in its late Seventies' setting. There's glancing mention, as in the original, of competition from by minicab firms – we hear that an old Jewish cabbie has read prayers for the dead when he learns that a son has approached such an outfit for work. It's left to you, though, to draw any parallels with Uber.

A screenplay whose hymn to the capital depends so much on seeing film of the hopefuls mugging up on its maze of streets while negotiating them on their mopeds might not seem an obvious choice for a transfer to the stage. But Lipman's well-acted, rather delightful production concentrates on the relationships delineated by the humane humour and lightness of touch of her husband's script, while Block attractively develops the female characters who now have more to say for themselves.

The main focus is on glum, scared, jobless Chris (Fabien Frankel) who's been pushed into applying by Janet (Alice Felgate) who is forced to be determined for two of them. We also keep close tabs on Ben Caplan's Ted, an unassuming whizz determined to prove that he's no black sheep to his patronising family dynasty of Jewish cabbies. And on James Alexandrou's Gordon, a cowboy fitter who sees acquiring “the knowledge” as mainly a great alibi for cheating on his wife. Removing one of the male characters, Block's version has more time to dwell on a clever, no-nonsense female aspirant, Miss Stavely (Louise Callaghan) who is given some very funny put-downs of Gordon's sleazy, sexist approaches and the chance to talk about the advantages and disadvantages for a woman in this traditionally blokey business.

“It's like being addicted to something you hate,” says Chris, of all the memorising. The men are reduced to being unable to talk about anything else, while their womenfolk (Felgate. Jenna Augen, Celine Abrahams) are driven to a little light screaming at the neglect. The most irresistible character, though – and one of the great comic obsessives in drama – is the fearsome examiner, Mr Burgess, nicknamed 'the Vampire', who was unforgettably played by Nigel Hawthorne on television. Up in his office, wittily positioned here at the top of a toadstool structure, Steven Pacey's Burgess is less frightening but wonderfully funny – brushing his moustache and his Japanese bonsai tree with the same potty devotion and keeping everyone unnerved with sudden alarming switches of tack. Shoving Vick inhalers up his nostrils, performing press-ups, shifting from wild laughter to silence in a second, this eccentric tyrant claims to be readying his charges for the volatiliy of future passengers. But it feels deliciously in excess of that. A monomaniac shyly proud of his sense of humour? “Mrs Burgess is in stitches 70 per cent of the time.” A period piece, given a charming new lease of life.