They told us to Relax! But when you’re a child of the 1980s you just can’t get enough.

And so it was for the 50-somethings (and older) who hit the town for a nostalgic trip down memory lane to Mr Cinders nightclub.

It was a packed house at the Old Laundry Theatre, in Bowness-on-Windermere, as we sat back to relive our youth, with clenched buttocks and knowing smiles aplenty, voyeurs to the dancing, drinking and debauchery on stage.

It is Friday night and the lads are prepping for the big night ahead, a £3.50 Phil Oakey or Tony Hadley haircut down at the barbers, a quick wash with Clearasil, a splash of Aramis and a check of the suit before handing over their dole money on one, six, 14 drinks on a pub crawl.

The lasses have been to the salon too, a spray of Impulse and they’re on their way in the latest must-have from C&A or Chelsea Girl to Salt-n-Pepa’s Push It!

Meanwhile, tensions are rising on the door of Mr Cinders where the Bouncers do their best Axel F moves and wait for the pubs to turn out so their work can begin.

It all adds up to a toxic mix at a time when nothing was woke, and war and famine raged – the reminder that nothing has changed there providing a hint to the pathos to come.

This is The John Godber Company’s award-winning Bouncers – Les, Ralph, Judd and the irrepressible Lucky Eric – on the door of a Yorkshire disco (apparently based on Godber’s own experience failing to pick up women in Pontefract). Premiering at the Edinburgh Festival as far back as 1977 (the content obviously rebooted to the 1980s), it is still one of the most performed plays in the UK and one of The National Theatre’s Plays of the Century, for its social commentary on the times as much as its clever comedy.

And the cast of Frazer Hammill (Eric), Nick Figgis (Judd), Tom Whittaker (Ralph) and George Reid (Les) – do its enduring appeal justice as they move at breathtaking pace through each hilarious scene. Yes, they play the lads, the lasses, the eponymous Bouncers and more.

It is vulgar, primal, edgy, non-PC and laugh out loud funny – my personal favourite scene being the Shalamar singalong.

There’s the unforgettable trip to the urinals, the “condoms like dead Smurfs” line, pizza and the rest down the alley, the puerile behaviour in the taxi ride home and the coyote women you might wake up with (you would rather bite your arm off to escape safely).

But the Bouncers want us to know they aren’t thick and have a sensitive side too – well, sometimes – how those guys on the door weren’t just Mike Tyson in a dicky bow, and had as many hopes and dreams as the girls inside dancing round their handbags and the lads getting a skinful at the bar.

The hilarity is abruptly cut with each of Lucky Eric’s social comment monologues spotlighting the dark side of nightlife: ‘the giddy girls wanting to be women, 18 going on 35” that he wants to protect; Tuesday’s over-25s night when everyone comes with baggage; and the Miss Wet T-shirts, “all of them somebody’s daughter – and my wife one of them” recoils sad Eric.

It's brutal, but each time chaos reigns again fast enough that we don’t dwell and we’re quickly back on the dance floor.

There’s Culture Club, Tiffany, The Specials as we rewind the clock to the bitter end of the slow dance. “Only the ugly ones are left at two o’clock,” say the Bouncers.

We laugh, and laugh, until we’re on our way, like any good night out it’s over too soon. Safe journey home folks.

Coming soon: Alan Ayckbourn's Things We Do For Love