The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at Chichester Festival Theatre: Review - this is how beloved stars Hayley Mills, Paul Nicholas and Rula Lenska fare in this revival

The 2011 film was packed with the best veteran actors in the business. Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, and Maggie Smith – it was almost a downmarket Downton set in India – led us through a roller-coaster of laughs and tears as these down at heel pensioners found cheap solace in the sunshine.

This new stage production by Deborah Moggach based on her novel These Foolish Things retains all that warmth and humour – and boasts another selection of veteran actors.

How good it is to see Hayley Mills, Paul Nicholas, Rula Lenska, and Richenda Carey – along with a host of others – in tip top form as they look for an alternative place to spend their twilight years rather than an English care home.

The Marigold Hotel is rundown and on the verge of bankruptcy. The food is as second rate as the decor. It has certainly been oversold to them. Yet despite its dilapidation it proves the catalyst to set this motley bunch of pensioners free from an otherwise dreary final few years.

There are times when the production lacks a little pace and on the night we attended there was a medical emergency in the auditorium which brought the action to a halt for a few minutes.

But these more mature stars have lost none of their magic – and with split second timing deliver the laughs with bulls eye precision.

Some of us remember a younger Hayley Mills in the classic Agatha Christie Endless Night made in the early 1970s. The years might have ticked by, but she has lost none of her ability to dazzle. She is a class act of the first degree.

The younger actors, not least heart-throb Nishad More as the hapless manager Sonny Kapoor, also bring real sparkle to the night.

The film undoubtedly has the edge not least because of the camera’s ability to get up close and personal. But this show brings a little of the exotic to an otherwise gloomy February in Sussex.