Romantic Comedy might sound like a Scary Movie take on chick flicks but Bernard Slade's play - which comes to Richmond Theatre next week - is more an affectionate homage than a post-modern parody.

The rom-coms it references are not of the Hugh Grant/Sandra Bullock sort but the gentler stage versions of the 50s.

Though with Tom Conti in the lead - every bit as floppy-haired and dashing as Grant - the show is no less of a crowd-pleaser.

"I grew up with those kind of plays," says Conti, who plays Jason Carmichael, a successful but self-centred Broadway playwright who meets the love of his life on the day of his wedding to somebody else. (So far, so Richard Curtis).

"My parents both liked the theatre and I have very pleasant memories of being taken to plays whenever we went down to London. Cicely Courtneidge, Denholm Elliott - I remember them all.

"But then, the kitchen sink arrived on the scene and the French windows were broken. Romantic comedies became passé in the theatre. So, when I came across Bernard's piece on Broadway in 1979 - with Anthony Perkins and Mia Farrow as the leads - I loved it."

The love was reciprocated. It was Slade who, a few years later, asked Conti to open the show in London opposite Pauline Collins, his co-star in the film Shirley Valentine - surely the romantic comedy to end all romantic comedies.

And, when it came to reviving it two decades on for this tour, he needed no persuading.

Conti's leading lady in this production is Australian actress Kate Atkinson, of Kath and Kim fame. Has it been a different experience second time round?

"Inevitably," he answers. "Pauline and Kate are very different types of actress. Pauline is just a staggering talent but Kate is young and brings great flair to the part. As for me, I'm older and wiser and can bring that experience to my performance."

And, when the tour ends, it is back to pad and pen. Conti is something of an author, having published his first novel in 2005. The Doctor was a racy tale of a secret operations pilot who flees England for a new life in Africa. What is in store for book two?

"As soon as I finish this run, I will think about it," says Conti. "I can't write when I'm doing something else. But it's going to be a very dark love story. Very dark indeed."

Romantic Comedy, Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, Monday, Nov 5 to Saturday, Nov 10, £14-£28, 0870 060 6651, richmondtheatre.net