Maurice's Jubilee, at Theatre Royal Brighton Nichola McAuliffe, well known to many from her appearances in television programmes including Surgical Spirit and Coronation Street, is also an author and playwright. Maurice's Jubilee, a hit at last year's Edinburgh Festival, is her second play and a neat three-hander. We are in a poky suburban sitting room where Maurice (Julian Glover), a former soldier and jeweller, awaits his death from cancer, an illness he describes with typical gusto as having gone "from balls to brain." McAuliffe is Katy, his palliative care nurse, all breezy bossiness; and Sheila Reid his long-suffering wife, Helena, who is in denial about his condition. Maurice is determined to reach his 90th birthday when, he says, the Queen is coming to tea. Are we seeing the delusional effects of his illness, or does he just like to make up a good story? We learn that on the night before the Coronation, Maurice was entrusted with delivering the Crown Jewels to the young Princess Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. They shared a few hours" company, and she promised him that she would visit him 60 years later, on his birthday, which is also the eve of her Diamond Jubilee. The denouement, when it comes, is cleverly done. It's clear that the story, many times retold, has been a constant thorn in Maurice and Helena's relationship. There were, to borrow a phrase, three of them in this marriage and when Katy asks her about it, all the bitterness of the past six decades is contained in Helena's angry response: "All I know is that on the night before the Coronation he came home smelling of whisky and talking rubbish and saying that he'd been with the Queen." Glover holds the audience's attention throughout a long speech about his night at the palace, and the banter between him and McAuliffe rings true, while Reid captures the poignancy of her underwritten character. It could be horribly sentimental, but McAuliffe throws in enough waspish lines to save it from that fate and, despite the occasional slow scene, under Hannah Eidinow's direction the story is efficiently told. Touring to April 20; mauricesjubilee.com